1971 Great Britain (BCF) v Netherlands, 30-31 October, Unilever House, Blackfriars, London

	Great Britain	Elo	Rd 1	Rd 2	Netherlands	Elo
1	Raymond D Keene	2465m	0-1	0-1	Jan Hein Donner	2500g
2	William R Hartston	2390	1-0	1-0	Hans Ree	2430m
3	Jonathan Penrose	2450m	½-½	½-½	Rob G Hartoch	2400
4	Robert G Wade	2365m	½-½	1-0	Kick Langeweg	2425
5	George S Botterill		½-½	1-0	Franz Kuijpers	2420
6	Peter R Markland	2510	1-0	½-½	Eddie C Scholl	2430
7	Andrew J Whiteley		½-½	½-½	Hans Bouwmeester	2430
8	Bernard Cafferty	2440	½-½	0-1	Bert F Enklaar
European Team Championship			4½-3½	4½-3½
9	Robert Bellin		1-0	1-0	Roy G Dieks
10	Jana Hartston [Bellin]		½-½	0-1	Ada van der Giessen
Annual Match Score			6-4	5½-4½
30-31 October 1971			11½-8½		Unilever House, London

BCM, December 1971, ppn 445-448

The Anglo-Dutch Match

Report by H.GOLOMBEK

It was this country's turn to entertain the Dutch in our annual match in what is at one and the same time one of the most friendly events and one of the sharpest contested struggles in our entire chess calendar. The match took place on October 30th and 31st in ideal conditions at Unilever House, that impressive building that overlooks the Thames by Blackfriars on what is perhaps the windiest corner of London but one which has the virtue, as far as I myself am concerned, of also containing the building where the 'Times' is situated. In fact, all I had to do to send in my report of the event was to walk over from one building to the other and type it out whilst listening to a reporter avidly typing out his own report of the bombing atrocities in Belfast interpolated by vain calls to Scotland Yard to elicit further information.

This same reporter confided to me how happy he was to be leaving the dreary windswept monotony of Printing House Square for the bombswept pleasures of Belfast the following Tuesday. Chacun à son goût - for myself I found the sway of the struggle at Unilever House exciting enough without having to seek the gratuitous aid of bombs and bullets to stir my pulse.

The match this year was doubly important; for on its issue, or, rather, on the result on the top eight boards, depended the qualification or otherwise of the Dutch or ourselves for the finals of the European Team Championship in 1973. Originally our preliminary group had consisted of four countries, the B.C.F., Ireland, the Netherlands and the Faroe Islands. But first Ireland and then the Faroe Islands withdrew from the contest so that all depended on this match, a lucky break for us when one considers that a number of the other preliminary groups contained at least two countries who had qualified for the finals last time. True, Spain had it even easier in its group where both Morocco and Switzerland withdrew leaving Spain and Tunisia to fight it out. But consider, for example, the group that played at Aarhus in Denmark and included East Germany, Denmark, Poland and Finland. After a terrific struggle between the East Germans and the Poles the latter emerged winners by half a point so that East Germany, winner in the last finals of the bronze medal, was excluded from the final this time as too was Denmark, despite their having the redoubtable Bent Larsen at their head.

This was not the only stroke of luck we enjoyed. On paper the two teams, ours and the Dutch, were at full strength. But, at the eleventh hour as the editor of the Dutch magazine, Mr. Slavekoorde, puts it in his report, Timman failed to appear so that a reserve, Enklaar, had to be played on board 8, thereby disturbing the consistent balance of a powerful team that would otherwise have merited the appelation of favourite to win. This, in conjunction with another stroke of luck which I will describe later, was enough to turn the tables and leave the Dutch to suffer, again I call in the aid of Mr. Slavekoorde's report, a doubly sharp defeat.

Too much about luck you may say - well, let us take comfort in the vulgar fallacy that luck attends the stronger side and give the results which, after all, are the only thing that counts.

The B.C.F. had White on the even numbered boards the first day and Black on the second day on the even-numbered boards. The ninth board was the match between the two countries best junior and the tenth between their best lady players. It is clear that Bellin was much too good for Dieks and I believe in fact that it would have been better to have played him in the top eight. As for the match between the ladies – I am continually puzzled by the disappointing performance of our champion in this match. As last year, she never really got going and I am convinced that such a talented player as Jana Hartston must eventually show her true worth in this event as in others.

To return to the match as a whole, but in particular as it affected our chances for qualifying for the European finals: - we deservedly won the first round by 4½-3½. For, though Ray Keene succumbed to grandmaster Donner on Board One, the balance was redressed by Hartston's beautiful win over Ree and, with the other players holding their own, Peter Markland won a good ending against Scholl, so that ended up the day leading by one point.

Donner's win was a good one but, if I may proffer some no doubt unwanted advice and if our champion insists on playing a defence of the last century, then he would be better advised to look to Tarrasch rather than Tschigorin. Before Ray picks a quarrel à la Tschigorin let me hasten to add that, for obvious and valid reason, I do not see myself in the role of Prince Dadien of Mingrelia. Anyway, here is the game and the reader can judge for himself.

So we had won the first round by 4½-3½ and by an even bigger margin, 6-4, in the full annual match; but experience has shown that the winners of the first round are far from sure of winning the match and the clash in the second round looked for some time to be going so much in favour of the Dutch that they might win the whole event.

There was a certain parallel to the events of Round One on the top two boards where Keene again lost to Donner and Hartston again beat Ree; but as though the psychological resistance of the defeated players had been weakened by their experiences in the first round they put up hardly any fight this time as the two gamelets show.

So far matters were even and early draws between Penrose and Hartoch Whiteley and Bouwmeester kept them so. Then the match turned in favour of the Dutch. Cafferty lost to Enklaar and though the game between Botterill and Kuijpers seemed about even, the former was in great time trouble. Worse still, Wade, after getting the better of it in the opening, went astray in the middle game and was quite lost against Langeweg.

This time, however, it was the Dutch that weakened at the end. Kuijpers spoiled his chances to such an extent that he actually lost and with Markland and Scholl drawing everything hung on the Wade-Langeweg game. If this was lost for us, and indeed it should have been, then the match was a draw. There are a number of regulations that come onto being in such cases for the European Team Championship; but, curiously enough, they would not in any way have changed the result from a draw.

Discussions were already under way between the two sides as to the possibilities of a reply when something quite remarkable happened in the Wade game. I have already said, almost ad nauseam, that Wade was quite lost. But he is very tough, tough as nails, or even tougher in view of the way the nails supporting a leg of my record cabinet recently behaved. He stuck to his task and, with his opponent assisting, turned the tables completely. The game and the match was won and we were in the finals of the European Team Championship!

I give the game that decided the match.

---

CHESS, December 1971, Vol.37/639-40, ppn 65-66

England beat Holland

by B. Cafferty and T. D. Harding [game annotations - not included]

England scored a heartening victory in this match, of which the first eight boards counted in the European Team Championship. England and Holland were allocated to a preliminary group of four, together with Ireland and the Faroe Islands but these last two dropped out, making it a straight clash between England and Holland for the distinction of meeting the U.S.S.R., Yugoslavia, Hungary and four other leading sides in a tournament of finalists in 1973. Largely for financial reasons, we had never tried to qualify before. It was a relief to have only one match to play and that at home.

Timman, who was scheduled to take Holland's board three, had, we learnt, not yet returned from the U.S.S.R. where he had been playing in the tournament at Tbilisi.

An early shock came on top board where Keene's adoption of an unusual defence soon brought him into insuperable difficulties. However several other boards went quite nicely for us. Hartston outplayed a player whose recent results include draws with Spassky, Smyslov, Keres, Gligoric, Browne and Reshevsky.

A notable feature of both rounds was the readiness of Penrose to take short draws (20 and 22 moves respectively). Perhaps there is something in the theory that he has lost confidence in his stamina. The crucial game was Markland's whose opponent admitted afterwards "I played to win when in time trouble — very bad."

Bellin made it clear that his Athens result was just a bad dream by trouncing a player who had come ten places above him in the World Junior there.

In the second round Keene registered an even more catastrophic loss, Hartston an even more devastating win! Both games were over by noon after a 10 a.m. start.

Botterill forced a neat win though short of time but it still looked as if the Dutch could force a draw by winning the last game to finish. The board count system employed by F.I.D.E. would still have left the match all square, and the captains were already talking of a replay at Flushing next year.

However as Scholl commented to me at the dinner "Langeweg often gets a win on the queen's side but fails to pay enough attention to the opposite wing". So it turned out here. Wade's modest passed e-pawn hardly looked the equivalent of three united pawns on the queen's side but it played a winning role in an extraordinary swindle.

Now there arises the problem of 1973. The Dutch had an option to stage the final, but stated they would do so only if their side was in. By knocking them out we have probably trebled our travelling expenses at a time when government support for national teams going abroad is in grave jeopardy.

When I [Cafferty] was in Bulgaria, Ghizdavu of Rumania told me that he understood the final would be in Moscow. Can we be sure to raise and finance our best team then? A gloomy note on which to end the story of a real English success. Some credit for this success should go to the Friends of Chess and Cambridge University who respectively financed and organised a training tournament for six of the English side in the week before the match. The most notable result at this tournament was a win by Botterill over Donner.

[Notation footnote — Nineteen of the twenty competitors in the match used algebraic notation. ] B.C.

Games, with notes by T. D. Harding based on players' post-mortems, start on page 83.

The morning after ...

Came the dawn, and realisation that our team, whose finances are gravely threatened, now have to find funds for a final in which we are liable, as qualifiers from by far the weakest preliminary section, to be outclassed.

"Their's but to do and die!"

---

File Updated

Date	Notes
23 December 2023	Original upload of 20 games.
19 June 2025	Uploaded with score table, etc.