Trust the French to have cuisine in mind when coining their phrase for April Fool. On the front page of the Daily Telegraph of 3 April, I spotted a statistical prediction by my old rival for the British chess championship, Bill Hartston, that Seabass (a horse, not a marine delicacy) would win the Grand National. Bill’s theory, which seemed a sure thing at the time, was that according to past results, stretching back 174 years, winners would have a name of one word consisting of between seven and 11 letters and beginning with S, R, M or C. The winning horse would also be aged nine or ten. Believing in the infallibility of such an eminent ‘mathematician’ and ‘Cambridge University graduate’ as the Telegraph put it, without mentioning his distinction at chess, I placed £100 to win on Seabass, which promptly went to sleep and strolled in far behind even the generous limits permitted by an ‘each way’ punt. Seabass didn’t just get away; the horse never really got going.
My disappointment at Seabass’s failure to perform echoed an earlier encounter with a piscine dasher of mortal hopes. At the 1987 world championship between Karpov and Kasparov, a group of journalists had gathered for dinner in La Dorada restaurant in Seville. La Dorada, which is actually Spanish for a sea bream, is not just the name of the restaurant, but the title of their signature dish — a whole fish baked in a casing of salt, to retain the juices after the salt had been cracked away. The table unanimously began ordering dorada, when, out of the corner of my eye, I observed a waiter carrying something very large and very red on a huge tray. I inquired of a Spanish friend, the well-known sports journalist Leontxo Garcia, what this might be, and he answered a ‘bogavante’. Well, a bogavante was a lobster of gigantic dimension, but though tempted, I decided to avoid rocking the boat, and ordered the fish with everyone else. But a cunning plan had formed in my mind. I would return to La Dorada, I would order the bogavante, but someone else would pay for it.
Next day, at the championship match, I was delighted to make the acquaintance of the immensely wealthy vice president of the World Chess Federation, an official more than a player of any note. He too was pleased to meet a grandmaster who took his views on the Karpov v. Kasparov games very seriously… as in ‘oh Rafael, a concept of genius… Rafael, you see much more than all those grandmasters in the press room’ and so on…
Sure enough, after a week of death-defying panegyric, came an invitation to lunch. It was a hard choice, but I knew there could only be one establishment — La Dorada. Next day we arrived, I was given the menu, but my eyes were glazed over and after a decent pause I ordered a bogavante. Si señor, came the reply. The plan had worked. Within one week of first setting eyes on a bogavante, there I was, in La Dorada, just minutes away from an encounter with a giant lobster, and someone else was paying.
Then the waiter was weaving his way back towards me without my crustacean, and as he arrived I heard the dread words ‘Lo siento señor, but today the bogavante, she is off!’
Bill the seer was more player than prophet but this week’s puzzle shows another one that got away:
Anderssen-Hartston, Hastings 1973
1 … Qh3+! White resigns 2 Kxh3 Bf1 is mate
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