Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Greatness denied

Gordon Crown was an English player who could have become one of the greats of post WW2 chess. In the 1947 Anglo-Russian Match he finished 1-1 with Alexander Kotov, with both players winning a game each. Tragically for Crown, and British chess, he died at the age of 18 years old.
Here is an example of his attacking skill, from a correspondence game he played in 1947.

Crown,G - Leeson [B02]
corr, 1947

1.e4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.e5 Nfd7 4.e6 fxe6 5.d4 c5 6.dxc5 Nc6 7.Nf3 Nxc5 8.Bb5 Qd6 9.g3 Nd7 10.0-0 g6 11.Re1 Bg7 12.Ng5 Bxc3 13.Rxe6 Qc5 14.Bxc6 bxc6 15.bxc3 h6 16.Qe2 Nf8 17.Be3 Qc4(D)
18.Rxe7+ Kd8 19.Nf7+ Kxe7 20.Bc5+ Kf6 21.Qe5+ Kxf7 22.Qe7+ Kg8 23.Qxf8+ Kh7 24.Qf7# 1-0
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice blog. There is a long history of promising english junior chess players who died young.

I never met Gordon Crown (just before my time) but can remember his legacy and also William Prince, Ian Wells and other players who died at age 18 or younger!

Brazilian IM Herman Van Riemsdijk (who played recently at Queenstown) was an arbiter in the Sao Paulo tournament when Ian Wells drowned. Shaun maybe you should blog an Ian Wells game!

26 March 2009 at 08:59
Anonymous said...

There is a game by Gordon Crown on Ozbase. He played in the GB-AUS Radio Match in 1947 on Board 4 against M Gellis and won.

26 March 2009 at 13:42

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