A Very Curious Discovery

Context

I was at my chess club on Wednesday. There had been some demand for more lectures and talks, so I consulted my club librarian for some reference books. The topic for this talk was going to be former World Champion Alexander Alekhine, so the librarian hands me a set of books. Alexander Alekhine by Kotov, Alekhine's Best Games by C. H. O'D. Alexander, and so on. When I was thumbing through My Best Games of Chess by Alekhine himself, an old scoresheet fell out. Naturally, the club took this scoresheet and chessboard to the pub to look it over.

The game is dated 27th October 1954 and written in descriptive notation. The event was Douai vs Newbury. One club member mentioned the French city of Douai, however Google turns up a place called Douai Abbey, located not too far from Newbury in the south of England. To me, this looks like a club game, probably in some sort of league. Our White player is named Fanshawe, Black is Parry. Other than that, nothing else is known. Google did manage to turn up a player called Fanshawe at a chess club in Cheltenham in the 90s, but it's unlikely I'm going to find more than that.

After that, the only thing left to do is get into the game! I was very excited to see it at the time.

Maybe the game was a bit anticlimactic. Black did not put up a good game. I still think the excitement of finding a loose scoresheet and looking at the game was worth writing about. Finding a loose game tucked away in a book and wondering what it could possibly show is half the fun of reading old chess books. I also think this was a perfect example of how to not play the opening.

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to the next time I have something to write about!