My fellow county players, I have some truly fantastic news, the current FIDE President Kirsin Ilyumzhinov has agreed to allow Bedfordshire to participate in the upcoming Olympiad in Baku. Without doubt the most prestigious invitation Bedfordshire has ever received in its long history and one can only imagine the excitement the opportunity will be seized by. Four main players are required and two substitutes. This will be decided at a meeting to be announced shortly, let us hope as playing partners and long term friends it is conducted in a gentlemanly manner and doesn’t descend into an almighty scrum. Bedfordshire’s most senior members will soon be sent all the info including flight details, hotel bookings and so on.
Regarding the current FIDE President, I’ve been calling him all year to try and persuade him to allow Bedfordshire to play in the upcoming Olympiad as well as all future Olympiads. The essential part of the conversation went as follows:
M =Me
K= Kirsin
M ‘Alright, is that Kirsin?’
K ‘Yes, and who is this?’
M ‘It’s Mark.’
K ‘Oh, you again, (long pause) and what are you calling for this time as if I didn’t know?’
M ‘Hmm, well, as I explained in the e-mail I kept sending. The Olympiads these days are an absolute joke. Half the countries that enter aren’t even proper countries, like Aruba, Chinese Taipei, Guernsey, Jersey, and Andorra to name but a few, and in addition some of the countries participating are the most unpleasant places on the planet, like Iraq, Yemen, Nicaragua, to name but a few. Bedfordshire has got much more going for it than that lot so can you let us in or what?’
K ‘Mark, the problem is that Bedfordshire is far too strong to enter the Olympiad and we fear its participation will make a complete mockery of the whole event. It is abundantly clear that every team you play will be beaten 4-0. Under no circumstances whatsoever can I have ex-world champions and hordes of 2700+ players knocking on my office door demanding to know how they have been beaten by an unknown county player. This will cause complete chaos and undermine the entire event which will probably have to be abandoned as a result. It is, of course, the chess world’s worst kept secret that Bedfordshire was far stronger than the Soviet Union in its heyday. Even when Botvinnik’s train briefly stopped in Luton whilst en route to Nottingham in 1936, he confessed it was the only time in his life he was too terrified to play chess after a local gentleman entered his carriage with a chess set in hand, being aware of the fearsome reputation Bedfordshire had across the entire globe. When the offer finally came an hour or so into the journey Botvinnik, more relaxed, insisted that he would only play if given odds of a queen. The gentlemen from Luton obliged but was a well known figure of its thriving chess community and played on board 2 for the Luton ‘Z’ team. Naturally it was not long before Botvinnik resigned.
K ‘Given the abundance of talent you’ve always kept so well hidden to all except us of course, we will give you two choices: the first that your Bedfordshire players agree to play all matches blindfold and that their opponents’ moves are not announced during play to them, no questions concerning play can be asked or will be answered, your team members must simply guess what has been played before making their next move. Alternatively, you deliberately lose all matches against established nations but you can beat all the weak ones that no one cares about. We suggest this second option and expect you will take it.
The FIDE president then continued:
K ‘If Bedfordshire annihilates the entire chess world at the Baku Olympiad it might be annihilated in return…it could be that upon the victorious Bedfordshire team’s return a simultaneous display of atomic bombs may just happen to land on Milton Keynes Chess Club, Bedford Chess Club, Leighton Buzzard Chess Club and Northampton Chess Club, erm, but perhaps not Luton, after all, we don’t want to improve its appearance!
Those players who wish to form a team for Baku please sign up below. In doing so you express agreement with the following statement:
‘If I represent Bedfordshire at the Olympiad I promise not to constantly thrash super Grand masters or wallop ex-world champions with ease. Also, I don’t want to be killed or anything like that so I won’t say anything bad about Azerbaijan or anything nice about Armenia as well. I accept full responsibility for any atomic bombs landing on my chess club as a result of my over-performance at the board and promise to rebuild any chess club entirely obliterated with my own hands as a result. With the greatest of enthusiasm I will sign up below.’
Name?
Club?
Rating?
Colour Preference (if any)?
Ability to deliberately lose to 2800 & 2700 players?
If none, previous experience surviving atomic blastings?
Inside leg measurement?
Hat size?
The air speed velocity of an unladen swallow (African and European)?
Bedfordshire or Baku?
An Atomic Bomb
African or European?
McCreadyandChess 
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