Pinning the King

How do I get on these lists? A few weeks ago there was the email message I copied to Who Owns the World Championship? Today's morning mail had this:

Subject: An open letter to the Chess World
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 23:14:16 +0100
From: Ida Eddis Foster

Dear Chess World - Please find attached a request for urgent action by the Chess World. - Yours truly, Ida Eddis Foster

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Kingpin should be banned -- an open letter to the Chess World

Dear Chess World,

Shocked is scarcely the word for my reaction to issue 40 of Kingpin magazine. Reading the detailed article about Ray Keene, "Machiavelli on Ice", anyone would conclude that such a man merits no place at all in the chess world.

It was bad enough when the previous issue uncharitably put Ray's writing under the spotlight for 15 pages, together with some dark hints about his financial dealings. There should be a law against such things.

And now 13 more pages about what supposedly happened to investors' millions, and another unseemly charge of plagiarism, as if anybody cared. The heading contains a word not even in my dictionary, "Grandfraudster", and I regard this shambles with total disgust. Nobody's interested in such exposés, however much "documentary evidence" Kingpin finds to put on its website kingpinchess.net/penguin-files.

Enough is enough, and ideally Kingpin should be banned (or burned - or both). Failing that, I urge Ray's supporters, as well as all right-thinking chess-lovers, to:

1) Tell the Editor of Kingpin what he can do with copies of his magazine. The address is: kingpinchess@yahoo.com.

2) Write to the Editors of The Times and The Spectator, expressing dismay at the precise accusations against their chess correspondent and telling them they look ridiculous.

3) Send congratulatory messages to the British Chess Magazine and CHESS for steadfastly defending Ray's interests, by omission and/or commission.

4) Persuade leading officials of the English Chess Federation to make Ray the Finance Director, with unfettered powers.

5) Swamp chessgames.com with messages summarizing the attacks on him, so that Ray can respond at a safe site where, mercifully, there are still people who look up to him.

Please act now because Ray really needs help.

Yours truly, Ida Eddis Foster, Newtown, Rochester

2 December 2009

The KingpinChess.net URL included above is worth following if you have oodles of time to waste spend; note especially the 'Archives' links in the left sidebar. The site uses Wordpress as its publishing tool, meaning that it has a builtin RSS feed: kingpinchess.net/feed. (Mark Crowther's TWIC and Edward Winter's Chess Notes should both take note.)