BBC Radio 4
Play it by ear: Chess on the radio
It’s an interesting move but not unprecedented. Jon Speelman celebrates the revival of the fine tradition of broadcasting chess games on the radio
Jon Speelman, The Independent, giovedì 19 dicembre 2013
Hard though it is to play, chess is very easy to transmit. Just a couple of pieces of information are needed for listeners to comprehend a move and play it on their own boards at home (this is one factor in the great success of chess on the internet nowadays – it takes minimal bandwidth).
In those far-off days, they used English Descriptive notation, of course. If you move your knight on the first move, this can be “Knight to King’s Bishop Three” – written Kt-KB3 (I had to check for the hyphen myself, it’s so long ago). But nowadays the Algebraic system is universal and this is trivial for anybody who has ever used an A-Z map. Start at the bottom left-hand corner on a1 and the top right is h8. Kt-KB3 then becomes Ng1-f3 or, as it’s normally abbreviated, just Nf3. (And yes, Kt became N when letters became money).
Terence Tiller, who edited the chess programmes for most of the six years, described their success in Chess Treasury of the Air (still available online though not cheap for a paperback). All the top English players of the time appeared on the programme, playing in consultation games and often describing their “Favourite Game”. But the highlight was the foreign guests, who included the former world champion Max Euwe; the mercurial Mikhail Tal, champion from 1960-1; and the incomparable future champion Bobby Fischer.
During the series, which will be broadcast over a week, Lawson’s guests and opponents will include the shadow Cabinet minister, Rachel Reeves, who is a former British girls under-14 champion; former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician Natan Sharansky; writer and former homeless alcoholic John Healy; Women’s World Champion Hóu Yìfán from China – and Lennox Lewis, who I am told is a good club player. [...].
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