CHESS
During the first two weeks of Septem- ber London was supposed to have been the scene of the biggest and most glamorous chess tournament ever held in the UK. The organiser was Mr Aly Amin, a 45-year-old Egyptian, who owns a chess café in North London and has published several books on chess.
The advance publicity had been intense — £100,000 prize money, £50,000 no less, as first prize, and fifty Grandmasters com- peting. At stake in Amin's 'Chess for Peace' tournament would also be the impressive-sounding King Fand Trophy.
When 'Chess for Peace' opened at the North London Polytechnic on 1 Septem- ber, the reality was quite different. The prize fund had plummeted to £9,000 and there were just five Grandmasters present, none of them British.
Mr Amin has long been an enigma for the British chess community. He must now be proving a puzzle even to himself, for he has given at least two quite different explanations for the notable seepage of funds from his event. Just three weeks before the tournament was due to start came the first hint of trouble and the first excuse for the vanishing thousands. Amin claimed to have himself rejected the vaunted Saudi Arabian offer to sponsor his
Peace work
Raymond Keene
`Chess for Peace' tournament. The reason given was the massacre of 400 Iranians in Mecca. He added belligerently: 'I am outraged. This makes a mockery of peace. It's like someone opening fire in Hyde Park. . . . I have blacked King Fand's name from 5,000 copies of my latest chess publication and from 3,000 posters.'
With just one week to go before lift-off the plot thickened. According to Amin's revised version the PLO, of all people, had now come forward as possible alternative backers; players would be asked to vote on the first day of the tournament whether to accept their money or not. On the first day there was no vote, but there was a heart- rending new story. Now, apparently, Amin's dream of 'bringing people together to sit down, shake hands and play chess in peace' had been shattered when his spon- sor pulled out after discovering that Israelis would be taking part.
Apologists for Amin have claimed the participation of Arabs and Jews in 'Chess for Peace' as the tournament's one out- standing achievement. That of course over- looks the obvious fact that Arabs and Jews have been playing each other for years in British tournaments, as indeed elsewhere. In fact it is the norm. The one unfortunate exception was Dubai 1986.
While no one would dream of accusing Mr Amin of having concocted a story that he had a mega-sponsor in play it is at least odd that, according to his own press release, Amin never had any written con- firmation that the cheque from King Fand was in the post. After all, King Fand has never previously been known as a major sponsor for chess. Written agreement for the sponsorship might therefore have been deemed a prudent, nay necessary, precon- dition for the optimistic advance publicity which was, for example, appearing week after week on BBC Ceefax.
In the event Julian Hodgson (GB), Gavin Crawley (also GB) and D. Barua (India) tied for first place in the main tournament with 9/11. Julian Hodgson won the blitz play-off for the trophy, a £2333.34 prize, and the following curious miniature: Huque (Bangladesh) — Hodgson: Benoni.
1 d4 Nf6 2 Nf3 c5 3 c4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 e5 5 Nb5 d5 6 cxd5 Bc5 7 d6 Ne4 8 Nc7+? Qxc7! 9 Qa4+ Qc6 White resigns. 7 . . Ne4 set a devilish trap into which White rushed headlong. Of course, if 9 dxc7 Bxf2 is checkmate.
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