Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

[Wayne Komer]

One of the problems one meets in collecting chess books over a large number of years is not being able to locate a specific item, no matter how hard you look. The opposite side of that is happily finding something that you didn’t know you owned.

Today I was in the attic looking at some old Canadian chess magazines from the 70s and 80s. I haven’t visited them in decades. In one of the piles were folded stapled sheets of papers with the title “Peter’s Principles”.
Published by the Committee for the 1981 Canadian Closed by Bruce Harper and Gordon Taylor.

“Contained herein is an abridged but unexpurgated transcript of a lecture given by International Grandmaster Peter Biyiasis (sic) at the Central Chess Club, Vancouver, B.C. on February 22, 1979. Three of Peter’s best games from international competition, two of them recipients of brilliancy prizes, are extensively discussed.”

(snip)

(Peter) All right..I know just about every one of you. I want to talk about several things tonight..and I want to start off with.. the ones that I don’t know, if you have any questions about international chess, or any general questions, anyone, we should get those out of the way before I go on into the lecture..so is there anything in general?

[“Well, I’m the Secretary-Treasurer of this club, and I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know who you are.”]
Oh.
[Laughter.]
Well, I’m..uh..
[Laughter.]
How can you pay two dollars to watch a lecture by someone when you don’t even know who it is?
[“I’m willing to help the cause.”]

Okay, well, I’m Peter Biyiasas. I’m a Grandmaster of this game. I’ve played a lot of the greatest players in the world, and I known most of them personally, so..”

And he went on to discuss Biyiasas-Torre, Manila, 1976, Speelman-Biyiasas, Lone Pine 1978 and Biyiasas-Vasiukov, Hastings, 1978-79.

The transcript is 14 pages long but an enjoyable read. I have failed to find a copy online.

I started to remember that at about this time there was another such transcription called “The Suttles Tapes” but I couldn’t get a copy then. This I was lucky enough to find online now at

http://www.suttlesbook.com/Suttles-tapes.pdf

It was taken from a lecture delivered by Duncan Suttles on September 11, 1978 at the CCC Vancouver but handed out (?) at the 1981 Canadian Closed.
The games given were from the 62nd Canadian Chess Championship – Hebert-Vranesic, Day-Biyiasas and Day-Hebert. It is a 13-page pdf.

Kudos to Harper, Taylor and Westbrook for their compilation.

I wonder if any such other transcripts exist? Binding them together would make a wonderful little book of Canadian games.

[Gordon Taylor]

Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

I'll add a little background as I was involved in both projects. The Suttles Tapes was based on a lecture Duncan gave on Sept 11, 1978 (per the intro) and Peter's Principles from a later lecture Peter gave on Feb 22, 1979. Duncan talked about three games from the 1978 Canadian Closed that had recently concluded in Toronto, and where Jean Hebert had won the title ahead of Biyiasas. The next Closed was scheduled for 1981 and there was a movement afoot, led for the most part by Bruce Harper, to bring the next Closed to Vancouver and to get Duncan Suttles to play. As best I recall, Duncan wasn't too keen on playing in a 16 player RR but was maybe interested in an 8 player double RR. Both lectures and the subsequent bulletins were part of fund raising efforts to support this end. But the change in format was not popular with the CFC. We made a motion to alter the Closed format and I think it was just ruled out of order and never came to a vote. (A rather high handed action I felt, but not untypical of the CFC.) Montreal ended up hosting the Closed in 1981 while Vancouver held a number of events culminating in the Vancouver International where Suttles did play and ended up sharing first place with Tony Miles. Both bulletins were cobbled together using a tape-recorder and an IBM Selectric typewriter and were printed for next to nothing as we had a benefactor.

The Biyiasis typo appears only in the opening intro. We got it right inside. As I've said before the intros/blurbs are usually the last things to be done and almost always have errors. I don't think Biyiasas originally intended to help us in this effort, but when he saw the Suttles Tapes, and how well they were received, he stepped up. I think he only asked for 50 or so copies for himself which he sold on the side.

[Gordon Taylor]

Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

In answer to Wayne's last query, I think these two transcripts are unique, at least to that time and place.

[Dan Scoones]

Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

There was a third volume in the series, entitled Harper's Horrors.

[Gordon Taylor]

Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

And why was I not informed? Hrumph! Must have come much later?

[Louis Morin]

Re : Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

There was a third volume in the series, entitled Harper's Horrors.

Is any of these three volumes available?

[Hugh Brodie]

Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

A Google search game me the following:

The Suttles Tapes:

http://www.suttlesbook.com/Suttles-tapes.pdf

Nothing similar for "Peter's Principles" or "Harper's Horrors".

[Dan Scoones]

Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

I went through some boxes last week and found "The Suttles Tapes," "Peter's Principles," and "Harper's Horrors" in a file folder. Any redistribution would require permission I should think.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

Since Bruce Harper is a ChessTalk member and may be reading this, cannot he give permission for a limited distribution of Harper’s Horrors?

Given the grisly title, its reappearance from limbo would be quite fitting with Halloween so close and I could make up my little Canadian booklet of the Suttles/Biyiasis/Harper combo.

[Louis Morin]

Re : Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

I just found this book on the web:


Title: "Articles On Chess In Canada, including: Jonathan Schaeffer, Daniel Yanofsky, Nathan Divinsky, Nava Starr, Natalia Khoudgarian, Danny Kopec, Sofia Polgar, Joel Lautier, Duncan Suttles, Mark Bluvshtein, Igor Vasilyevich Ivanov"

Author and publisher: Hephaestus Books

It can easily be googled using the ISBN number: 1244474347

As far as I can see, this book does not contain any articles written by these players, but is a mere collection of Wikipedia articles on these (sometimes) Canadian players.

I really wonder how legal it is to copy various stuff from Wikipedia, to put it all together and to sell this as your own book.

[Kerry Liles]

Re: Re : Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

I just found this book on the web:


Title: "Articles On Chess In Canada, including: Jonathan Schaeffer, Daniel Yanofsky, Nathan Divinsky, Nava Starr, Natalia Khoudgarian, Danny Kopec, Sofia Polgar, Joel Lautier, Duncan Suttles, Mark Bluvshtein, Igor Vasilyevich Ivanov"

Author and publisher: Hephaestus Books

It can easily be googled using the ISBN number: 1244474347

As far as I can see, this book does not contain any articles written by these players, but is a mere collection of Wikipedia articles on these (sometimes) Canadian players.

I really wonder how legal it is to copy various stuff from Wikipedia, to put it all together and to sell this as your own book.

This is happening more and more... I don't see any particular way to prevent it. There are suckers born every minute.
With the advent of publishing on demand services, the low life fraudsters do not even need to invest any money to produce
the actual product either!

I suspect that most of these schemes involve print on demand, so I always treat that as a BIG RED flag (although sadly, there are exceptions but
you have to be extremely vigilant before you request and pay for a printed copy).

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Re : Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

Edward Winter in Chess Notes warned of this type of publishing back in November of 2009

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/w...edia_grab-bags

6380. Wikipedia grab-bags

A grotesque publishing innovation is a series of books, which, self-confessedly, are no more than grab-bags of Wikipedia entries. Slim volumes on Capablanca and Lasker have just been in our hands, as briefly as possible.

Readers who visit amazon.com and enter ‘Alphascript’ for the publisher and ‘chess’ for the keyword will see that the adjective ‘grotesque’ also applies to the prices.

[T A Biyiasas]

Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

"I went through some boxes last week and found "The Suttles Tapes," "Peter's Principles," and "Harper's Horrors" in a file folder. Any redistribution would require permission I should think."
Hey, I'm Peter's son. He was telling me about Peter's Principles recently and mentioned this post. He's interested in reading the transcript (he sold all his copies) after all these years, and wanted me to give you permission to post.

[Paul Leblanc]

Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

I'll be introducing Duncan Suttles at the Canadian Senior Championship in a few days. I'll make sure to extract a quote from the Suttles tapes.
Any other Suttles anecdotes are welcome.

[Denis Allan]

Re: Peter’s Principles and The Suttles Tapes

A trivia question. What former Canadian Olympian was born in Nova Scotia, but is actually a Newfie, became a strong player in B.C., where he had the great honour of being called "Sask"?