Leonard Barden

Mortimer is known to have played Morphy many games in Paris during the 1850s and 1860s.

Morphy and Paulsen played at least 11 games against each other in 1857.

Barden also played four opponents of James Mortimer: Edward Sergeant, Savielly Tartakower, Sir George Thomas, and Eugene Znosko-Borovsky.

Mieses also beat Louis Paulsen at Breslau 1889.

Mieses drew with Henry Bird in the last round of Hastings 1895, and Bird played a number of games with Paul Morphy in 1858 and 1859.

Leonard William Barden (born 20 August 1929, in Croydon, London) is an English chess master, writer, broadcaster, journalist, organizer and promoter.

The son of a dustman, he was educated at Whitgift School, South Croydon, and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read modern history.

Barden learned to play chess at age 13 while in a school shelter during a World War II German air raid.

Within a few years he became one of the country's leading juniors.

Barden represented England in four Chess Olympiads.

Barden was born on 20 August 1929.

His father ran a business which collapsed during the Great Depression and eventually found employment as a dustman.

Leonard attended Whitgift School when it was a Grammar School before it reverted to independent status in 1946.

In 1946, Barden won the British Junior Correspondence Chess Championship, and tied for first place in the London Boys' Championship.

The following year he tied for first with Jonathan Penrose in the British Boys' Championship, but lost the playoff.

He drew with Jacques Mieses in the Premier Reserves at Hastings 1948–49.

Barden finished fourth at Hastings in 1951–52.

Barden captained the Oxfordshire team which won the English Counties championship in 1951 and 1952.

In the latter year, he captained the University of Oxford team which won the National Club Championship, and he represented the university in the annual team match against the University of Cambridge during his years there.

In 1952, he won the Paignton tournament ahead of the Canadian future grandmaster Daniel Yanofsky.

Barden represented England in the Chess Olympiads at Helsinki 1952 (playing fourth board, scoring 2 wins, 5 draws, and 4 losses), Amsterdam 1954 (playing first reserve, scoring 1 win, 2 draws, and 4 losses), Leipzig 1960 (first reserve; 4 wins, 4 draws, 2 losses) and Varna 1962 (first reserve; 7 wins, 2 draws, 3 losses).

The latter was his best performance by far.

Barden has a Morphy number of 3 by six different routes.

In 1953, Barden won the individual British Lightning Championship (ten seconds a move).

The following year, he tied for first with the Belgian grandmaster Albéric O'Kelly de Galway at Bognor Regis, was joint British champion, with Alan Phillips, and won the Southern Counties Championship.

Barden finished fourth at Hastings 1957–58, ranked by Chessmetrics as his best statistical performance.

In the 1958 British Chess Championship, Barden again tied for first, but lost the playoff match to Penrose 1½–3½.

He was a regular contributor to the BBC's Network Three weekly radio chess programme from 1958 to 1963.

His best-known contribution was a consultation game, recorded in 1960 and broadcast in 1961, where he partnered Bobby Fischer against the English masters Jonathan Penrose and Peter Clarke.

This was the only recorded consultation game of Fischer's career.

The game, unfinished after eight hours of play, was adjudicated a draw by former world champion Max Euwe.

In 1964, Barden gave up most competitive chess to devote his time to chess organisation, broadcasting, and writing about the game.

He has made invaluable contributions to English chess as a populariser, writer, organiser, fundraiser, and broadcaster.

He was controller of the British Chess Federation Grand Prix for many years, having found its first sponsor, Cutty Sark whisky.

He played a major role in the rise of English chess from the 1970s.

Barden is a chess columnist for various newspapers.

His column in London's Evening Standard is the world's longest-running daily chess column by the same author.

Barden gave BBC television commentaries on all the games in the 1972 world championship.

From 1973 to 1978 he was co-presenter of BBC2's annual Master Game televised programme.

As of April 2023, Barden's weekly column has been published in The Guardian for 67 years and in The Financial Times for 48 years.