The Master Game

The Master Game was a BBC production of televised chess tournaments that ran for seven series on BBC2 from 1976 until 1982.

Presented by Jeremy James and with expert analysis from Leonard Barden and, later, Bill Hartston, The Master Game was highly regarded for its innovative techniques, by which an animated two-dimensional board and move notation, centre-left of screen, were complemented on the right by footage of the players cogitating, whilst they shared their thoughts and emotions with the viewer in voice-over.

The Disco '78 version of Ennio Morricone's Come Maddalena was memorably used as the show's theme tune.

History and Technique

Master Game producer Robert Toner recalled working on the coverage of the Fischer-Spassky 1972 World Championship match:

“Marsland Gander, then TV critic of the Daily Telegraph, wrote, 'The manner in which the games are presented, with experts standing in front of magnetic boards, moving pieces by hand, shows that television has made no technical progress with chess for the past twenty years'. He was right – from that time I began to wrestle with the problem.”

The result was the creation of a special invitational knock-out tournament. The games were played away from the television studio with the audio recordings of the players' thoughts being made immediately afterwards. The players were then filmed later, in a studio reconstruction of the game made to match the audio recordings.

To this unorthodox production method was added the ground-breaking animated board and pieces created by designer John Bone and the technicians at BBC Bristol. This effect was achieved using a glass chess table on which the moves were made by a cloaked and gloved player. The piece symbols seen on-screen were actually on the underside of the pieces themselves, which were filmed from beneath using a mirror to correct for the left/right reversal that resulted. In addition to this, the expert commentator could use an electronic pointer, lighting up the borders of squares to indicate the play being discussed. The effect that combining all of these elements produced had never been previously achieved and is remarkably similar to the high quality, digitally produced, multimedia chess presentations of today but was essentially created using only puppetry and fairy lights.

Series details

The series were variously directed by Geoff Walmsley, Sandra Wainwright and Jill Dawson.

Knock-out format

• Series One (1975-6)

First Prize: £250

Participants: George Botterill, Bill Hartston (winner), Jonathan Mestel, Tony Miles, John Nunn, Jonathan Speelman (runner-up), Michael Stean, Howard Williams

• Series Two (1976-7)

Participants: George Botterill, Peter Clarke, Jana Hartston, Bill Hartston (winner), Julian Hodgson, Tony Miles, John Nunn (runner-up), Nigel Short

• Series Three (1977-8)

First Prize: £1250

Participants: Jan Hein Donner, Bill Hartston, Werner Hug, Anatoly Karpov (winner), Bent Larsen, Tony Miles (runner-up) Helmut Pfleger, Lothar Schmid

• Series Four (1978-9)

Participants: Walter Browne, Jan Hein Donner, Gyozo Forintos, Vlastimil Hort (runner-up), Bent Larsen (winner), Tony Miles, John Nunn, Alberik O'Kelly

Two-group format adopted

• Series Five (1979-80)

Participants: A) Walter Browne (runner-up), Vlastimil Hort, John Nunn, Helmut Pfleger; B) Robert Byrne, Lothar Schmid (winner), Michael Stean, Viktor Korchnoi

• Series Six (1980-1)

Participants: A) Robert Byrne, Svetozar Gligorić, Vlastimil Hort, Nigel Short (winner); B) Jan Hein Donner, Bent Larsen, Tony Miles (runner-up), Lothar Schmid

• Series Seven (1981-2)

First Prize: £2500

Participants: A) Andras Adorjan (runner-up), Larry Christiansen, Hans-Joachim Hecht, Nigel Short; B) Walter Browne, Raymond Keene, Eric Lobron (winner), Miguel Quinteros

External links

• YouTube channel featuring broadcast episodes of The Master Game