Jim West On Chess: Take the F-Pawn

Friday, August 1, 2008

Take the F-Pawn

Recently at TradeMe, someone tried to sell a copy of The Philidor Counter-Gambit which I signed for the late NM Barry Spiro. Spiro wrote a column for Atlantic Chess News called "Take the A-Pawn," no doubt a take off on Duke Ellington's "Take the 'A' Train."

When The Philidor Counter-Gambit was published in 1994, I mailed free copies to several chess acquaintances including Spiro. In signing the copies, I wrote a personalized message for each recipient above my signature. In Spiro's case, I penned, "Barry, take the f-pawn!"

Apparently my handwriting is worse than I realized because the seller on TradeMe misrepresents my note as "Ben, take the f-pawn!" I wonder how the seller got hold of Spiro's copy of my book without knowing that Spiro's first name was Barry, not Ben.

Poor Barry! At chessgames.com, his name is given as Spiro Barry.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov