With the fixture list for the new league season published on the Oxfordshire Chess website — and the draw for the Frank Wood Shield made and similarly posted — the new chess season can’t be far away.

Before hostilities get under way in earnest though, there’s a chance for Oxfordshire players to warm up at the Witney Rapid-play on Sunday, September 29.

This one-day, six-round event takes place from 9.30am at the Batt School, Witney.

Mikhail Botvinnik was undoubtedly one of the 20th-century’s greatest players. A three-times World Champion, his scientific approach had an influence on all those who followed him — but especially on the K triumvirate Karpov, Kasparov and Kramnik.

In contrast, he has never attracted much of a fan base amongst chess fans and few would name him as their favourite player in the way that Kasparov, Fischer or Tal are regularly labelled. This lack of popularity must be partly, at least, due to his playing style which — unlike Tal’s for instance — was not overtly tactical.

There have not been as many books written on Botvinnik as you might expect for a player who ruled the chess world for over 20 years.

Seeking to correct this deficiency, American Cyrus Lakdawala has produced Botvinnik, Move By Move.

Lakdawala’s style is quirky, entertaining and littered with analogies which usually — though not always — manage to avoid being too obscure or elliptic to add to the text.

There are some 60 carefully annotated games here and I feel this enjoyable and instructive work will certainly help to make Botvinnik’s games better known — even if he will never replace Tal in the hearts of chess fans. The following game is among his better known attacking efforts — played in Monte Carlo in 1968 against Lajos Portisch a world class grandmaster sometimes tagged ‘the Hungarian Botvinnik’.

Mikhail Botvinnik

Lajos Portisch

1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.g3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.Bg2 Be6 6.Nf3 Nc6 7.0–0 Nb6 8.d3 Be7 9.a3 a5 10.Be3 0–0 11.Na4 Nxa4 12.Qxa4 Bd5 13.Rfc1 Re8 14.Rc2 Bf8 15.Rac1 Nb8?! Intending to shore up the c-file with c6 and trap the White rook if Botvinnik dares to take on c7.

16.Rxc7! Botvinnik does dare — but he’s seen a way out.

16...Bc6 17.R1xc6! bxc6 18.Rxf7! Lakdawala writes that this ‘...must have come as jarring shock to Portisch’.

18...h6 The rook can’t be taken: 18...Kxf7

19.Qc4+ Kg6 20.Qg4+ Kf7 21.Ng5+ Kg8 22.Qc4+ 19.Rb7 Qc8 20.Qc4+ Kh8 21.Nh4! Another rook offer and this time Portisch takes the bait.

21...Qxb7 22.Ng6+ Kh7 23.Be4 Bd6 24.Nxe5+ g6 25.Bxg6+ Kg7 26.Bxh6+! A final sacrifice and a fitting climax to a great game. After 26.Bxh6+ Kxh6 27.Qh4+ Kg7 28.Qh7+ Black loses his queen. 1–0