Yet all this has come to pass all the above is fact not fiction, reality not a day dream. If one had gone further and said that the same grandmaster X would become only the second British player this century to beat a reigning world champion, and that as Black in an irregular opening (1 e4 a6 2 d4 b5) then incredulity would indeed have been a fitting reaction. (Photo by Hoare/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) English chess grandmaster Tony Miles (1955 – 2001), UK, 6th May 1973. “If one had to forecast at the start of the 1970s the British chess would have a player in the next decade who would win the World Junior Championship, make plus score against Soviet players in his first years of play against them, and beat such household names as Geller, Bronstein, Larsen, Gligoric, Smyslov, Spassky and Karpov…one would have been called a romantic dreamer.

The event was the Anglo-Dutch match of October 1977 at Elvetham Hallįrom British Chess (Pergamon Press, 1983) by Bernard Cafferty : Tony’s signature from a presentation copy of European Team Championship 1973. We remember one of the most innovative and best loved English players of all time, Tony Miles.