Last year in December I received a curious email from grandmaster Dimitri Reinderman. He was doing research on chess songs by the Dutch post-punk band Eton Crop and had asked ChatGPT a question, to which the following answer had come:
“It’s My Dog, Maestro.” This song is about a famous incident in which the Dutch chess player Hans Ree brought a dog to a tournament. The anecdote describes how the dog distracted Ree’s opponent and ultimately caused a hilarious situation. The song uses this anecdote as a source of inspiration.
And also:
Hans Ree, an international grandmaster and writer on chess, recorded this anecdote himself in his chess columns and books.
Now, really! Normally ChatGPT is quite complimentary about people with a certain renown. Perhaps because the parent company, OpenAI, already expects enough legal problems about copyright infringements and does not want to have additional lawsuits for insult or defamation.
But taking a dog with me to distract my opponent? This was pure libel. I replied to Dimitri – who had already smelled a rat – that I had never owned a dog, had never been to a chess tournament with a dog and had not made up the story for a publication of my own either.
Dimitri then probed ChatGPT more closely and after a sharp interrogation the wretched thing admitted that his original story was not true. “It is a fabrication that I presented as fact, for which I apologize.”
Well, OK then, ChatGPT, but a fabrication by whom? That is what I wanted to know. I googled myself silly and found more stories about chess dogs than I had thought.
I had written about the Nottingham dog that in 1936 had temporarily caused an estrangement between Mikhail Botvinnik and Max Euwe. They were walking together and saw a dog of an unusual breed. “We don’t have dogs like that in Russia,” Botvinnik said. “No, you must have eaten them all” Euwe replied wittily, according to Botvinnik in his book Achieving the Aim. In spite of this misstep by Euwe, they would become good friends later.
I had written about Robert Hübner’s imaginary dog, about whom Hübner had said that he could make him an IM in six months. In 1997, there had been the famished wild dog of Novgorod that had attacked Nigel Short when he, also on a walk, was pondering the always difficult question of what to play against Kasparov in the final round the following day. Short was not discharged from the hospital until the following morning.
I saw that I had published games by the German ladies Barbara Hund and Isabel Hund and by the Frenchman Bruno Bouvier, but I saw nothing that resembled the story of ChatGPT and I was about to give up my googling when I finally found something that made me think: this must have been it.
It was an article by Constant Orbaan in the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad on January 27, 1968. Constant was the chess correspondent of that newspaper, for which I would also write, much later. He was also a longtime arbiter of the Hoogovens tournament, that in 1968 had just moved from Beverwijk to Wijk aan Zee.
In the article he wrote about the many languages that you could hear at the tournament, interrupted by the occasional barking of a dog. That dog was Fide. The press officer of the tournament Berry Withuis had named his dog after the world chess federation FIDE and his son Max after Max Euwe.
On one occasion, the dog Fide had taken a seat under the table where Kick Langeweg and Hein Donner were playing.
Constant wrote:
Fide knows exactly how things should be in the tournament hall and so he did not react in the least when Langeweg accidentally nudged him there.”
Our compatriot mumbled an embarrassed apology, whereupon his opponent Donner asked, “What do you mean? Does that mean a draw offer?”
Langeweg replied, “No, but there is a dog under the table.” Donner did not protest, as for a moment he had considered doing.
The game would finish as a draw.
I think it was the game that I present below. After Langeweg’s clear strategic hold in the first part of the game, it then becomes very messy and the advantage switches several times. Perhaps that was because of Fide.
By the way, Dimitri Reinderman’s search for chess songs by the band Eton Crop was not in vain. He found a song about the great Harry Nelson Pillsbury and songs with titles such as Beating the Sicilian, Rocking the Chessboard and Chessplayers are Good Blokes.
The latter title in particular appeals to me.
I had never heard of that band but discovered that it was founded in 1979 in Kudelstaart, a small village close to Amsterdam. The former lead singer and lyrics writer Peter Verschueren was and is a great chess lover.
Click here to view Langeweg-Donner, Wijk aan Zee 1968