Annual general meeting of the Ken Whyld Association in the Swiss Museum of Games and impressions of the Chess Olympiad at Turin

Dear chess friends,

again Ralf Binnewirtz and myself hurried up to complete a report on this year’s general meeting in La Tour-de-Peilz on the Lake Geneva as fast as possible. In the next few weeks we will put the still missing additions into the member’s area of our website, some participants like Richard Forster and John Donaldson are still committed to the Chess Olympiad in Turin.

From my point of view it was the right decision to carry out our third annual meeting at a place in such a magnificent area like the Château in La Tour-de-Peilz and I am completely sure that all participants will remember with pleasure the wonderful days in this particularly delightful scenery (in spite of Swiss prices). The premises and the technical equipment were very suitable for such a meeting, moreover the museum director, Ulrich Schädler and his team have taken a lot of trouble to give us a pleasant stay

How nice the weather was at the Lake Geneva at least till Thursday morning may be clearly shown by some impressions of La Tour-de-Peilz, of Vevey and of Montreux – even the famous Château de Chillon is within walking distance from La Tour-de-Peilz (along the lake). Also a trip towards Lausanne to the wine growing region Lavaux was worthwhile as I immediately tried out together with Tony Gillam on Wednesday evening.

[Château de Chillon: Gallery and Tour online]

Further numerous photos of this region online - needs some time to load!

The start on Thursday evening was literally drowned in water but that could hardly harm the good mood of the chess friends and their company gradually drifting in. At least there were some elements of surprise, so Tony Gillam and John Beasley never met in person before and we hadn’t reckoned at all on Alain Fayard’s participation. After all were put up in their hotels and also Lena Jönsson and Calle Erlandsson finally joined us during the dinner in an Italian restaurant, the start of the meeting was quite successful.

Next morning even more members arrived: Walter Simon, Bernd Ellinghoven and François Zutter; later on the Swiss "old-timer" of chess journalism, Alex Crisovan appeared together with his wife, further guests were Marie-Theres Saremba, Sue Beasley, Marion Oeben-Negele and Thomas Maeder from Bern.

After the morning was rapidly spent in fine weather on the board report on current activities (Michael Negele; see Member's Area, Page "Minutes and Documents") and on the cashing up / budget 2006 and 2007 (Jurgen Stigter replacing Peter Holmgren and Bert Corneth respectively) – the results will be summarized in a record – Ulrich Schädler could open at midday the Ken Whyld Library to give us a "preview".

See our gallery for further snapshots of the day.

We can only be grateful to the Swiss Museum of Games for the decision to provide such a nice room for the collection of our "eponym". Again many thanks, also for the kind hospitality on this occasion. We have willingly confirmed further support for this idea – our members are appealed to back up in word and deed.

It is of prior interest in La Tour-de-Peilz to have current subscriptions of leading chess magazines, here the “reborn” Deutsche Schachzeitung volume 2006 should make a start.

Subsequent to the tour which filled all of us with quite a lot of enthusiasm Richard Forster gave a short survey of what is available in the collection of the museum. With pleasure we made the offer to publish a printed catalogue of the Ken Whyld Library. And Tony Gillam found very personal words of remembrance of his long-standing friend Ken.

He talked about his present work on the Canadian Frank Anderson (picture below), on the forthcoming new edition of his two volumes on Rubinstein as well as on the Mechanics’ Institute (a nice jubilee book with numerous pages on the history of the Chess Room in San Francisco, the oldest chess club of the United States – see pictures below), and on additional interesting subjects such as the US-American chess magazines or the current chess scene.

I was particularly pleased that John succeeded in leading his team in Turin to the bronze medal – congratulations! – and that unshaven for several days (because a bag had been left in my Audi).

After a break (where John had already to leave) it was again Richard Forster who told us about his current work on the commemorative publication of the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the Zurich Chess Society 1809. We are all longing to see this extraordinary contribution to chess history.

Just as fascinating was Toni Preziuso’s report on his own research in chess primary sources (articles in papers / chess columns) and the methodology of the "Top-down" or "Bottom-up" search respectively for previously unknown facts and games.

Bernd Ellinghoven presented a totally different subject using audiovisual media: his topic was titled "Kambodschach" and he told about the acquisition of a chess set for the Swiss Museum of Games

As always time flied and after Ulrich Schädler had presented the new edition of his Alfonso book Libro de los Juegos we were unfortunately too short of time to present the Lasker project before our final dinner in the museum restaurant. (See our Member's Area / page "Minutes and Documents" about this.)

As a quite desperate Andreas Saremba failed to start a direct access to our prototype of the "Bibliography of Chess" via the museum’s Internet connection this contribution unfortunately turned out rather short. In the next few weeks an appeal will again be made to those members who have had a test access to the database up to now. The number of returns to Andreas Saremba who is naturally waiting for further suggestions has been very meagre till now, certainly greater efforts of our members are necessary here to pursue one of our principal goals with more commitment.

Apart from the nice dinner this evening offered a second highlight we owed to the hospitable Ulrich Schädler who at the close spontaneously offered a late-night tour of the Museum of Games – the pictures show with what a pleasure this offer was accepted.

You will find 12 further photos of the museum of games in our gallery.

Of course at the end of our meetings the book market is obligatory – my thanks go especially to Dusan Vukovic as well as to Tamás Erdélyi and his companion Daniel Lovas who didn’t shy away from the long journey with the heavy books. A special attraction was the selling of the duplicates by the Musée Suisse du Jeu – there was many an opportunity to buy a rare item at a very fair price. At the same time Ulrich Schädler enjoyed the handsome amount which may serve to carry on financing the library.

18 further photos from Saturday morning are to be found in our gallery "Book market".

On the whole this annual meeting too may belong to our successes, in spite of the relatively low attendance (caused by some very late refusals) of 17 members (+ 5 guests).

The meeting with our Italian friends planned for the following Monday, May 22, 2006 at Turin turned at first to a quite strange conflict with the local occurrences at the Oval Lingotto, one of the venues of the Winter Olympic Games. It’s true that our friend and chief arbiter Geurt Gijssen had - as promised - organized a room for us in the Olympic Village but the non-Olympic athletes Jurgen Stigter, Andreas Saremba and myself had failed to overcome the security hurdles without assistance. Only when I reached the gaming hall with the help of Tamás Erdélyi and then met Prof. Pagni who was able to contact Alessandro Sanvito by phone we came together with a considerable delay. But the essential goal, namely the discussion of our project “Bibliography of commemorative publications of German Chess Clubs till 1914” with Romano Bellucci could take place, and our Italian group with Alessandro Sanvito, Carlo Pagni, Romano Bellucci and Antonio Rosino proposed to organize a regional meeting in Venice – let’s wait and see!

13 additional photos of this meeting in our gallery "KWA members in Turin".

Finally I would like to show some impressions of the very nice playing area of the Chess Olympiad and of the Olympic Village – several members of the Ken Whyld Association like Alexander Baburin, Richard Forster, John Donaldson, Raj Tischbierek and naturally Geurt Gijssen were active there. As a tourist I wouldn’t like to judge if the organizational courses could withstand the visual effects. After all the FIDE has decided on "following a different path", it’s a shame that Bessel Kok and his "right move" didn’t succeed to bring about a drastic change.

Further 33 photos in our gallery "Olympiad".

In conclusion I would like to thank again Ulrich Schädler as well as all speakers and participants who – with their willingness to make a contribution to our community – have contributed a lot to the further success of our still rather young association.

In a few weeks we will surely be able to welcome quite a lot of our friends again at our tour to Ströbeck on June 23, 2006