Mark Bicknell, Chess Criminal

By Timothy Taylor

Many people have asked me why my most recent book, The Fischer King’s Gambit, will be self published. The short answer is that I ran into a chess criminal.

The long answer follows.

Mark Bicknell, the Managing Editor of Everyman Books, is a liar, a blackmailer and a thief. But perhaps his biggest sin is that he is a chess criminal.

Now what is a chess criminal, you might ask? In Bicknell’s case, it means that he attempted to force an author to accept, in his opening book, incorrect variations not written by the author. I would like to remind readers that opening books are supposed to be “non-fiction!”

Let’s do the details. The book in question is my King’s Gambit book, then entitled Attacking Chess: The King’s Gambit. Due to the delay in publishing, I have revised and updated the book, and retitled it as The Fischer King’s Gambit. Before this I had written eight previous books for Everyman, such as Slay the Sicilian, without editing problems, indeed usually with almost no editing at all. I strive to turn in an absolutely clean copy.

But let’s go back to our story. I write this book on the King’s Gambit, I turn it in and then …

An editor in Mark Bicknell’s employ, Jonathan Tait, produced a “butcher’s edit” as I accurately described it. He put diagrams in the wrong place, lopped out whole paragraphs of text, randomly inserted exclamation marks and questions marks that were not present in the original, not needed, and often just wrong. He reordered variations to make the text senseless. He destroyed a Capablanca reference by inserting a non-word never used by Capa, namely “themself.” He changed the meaning of lines one hundred eighty degrees by simply adding words at certain points: thus my “discouraged” became Tait’s “not discouraged.”

And more and more and more of the same, Tait inserted 184 errors in the first 218 pages of the book (less than half of the total manuscript) which must be some kind of record for editorial destruction! I never did go through the second half of the book page by page, so I don’t know the total number of inserted errors. However, I did glance through the second half, and one huge error jumped right out at me—this one was the absolute worst.

I take pride in my books. My readers know that I never try to mislead them. All my variations reflect my own knowledge and analysis, based on my chess understanding as an International Master, and I check each and every one of my lines with my faithful silicon friend, Mr. Fritz.

So what did I see? What was this absolute worst?

Glancing through the second half of the book (that is, looking at Jonathan Tait’s page proofs) I happened to look at Metz – Schlenker which illustrates the Nimzovich Counter Gambit. And right away I saw a strange variation. “I didn’t write that!” I exclaimed to myself. So what does a modern chess player do in such a situation? Naturally, I put Tait’s variation on my computer. However, before I could ask Mr. Fritz, I could already see on my ChessBase diagram that Tait’s new variation was a blunder. In this particular subvariation, White had kept the gambit pawn. I gave a variation with the note “and White keeps the plus pawn.” An accurate and correct variation, I should say.

Jonathan Tait added a variation on his own which was both unnecessary and dead wrong. He gives another line for Black (after which White could keep the plus pawn, just as in my line, with a simple skewer—but instead of giving that move, he gives something else, gives this new move an exclamation point, and concludes “White keeps the extra pawn.” Except he doesn’t. Any master can see immediately, as I did, that Tait’s line loses the extra pawn after a simple one move of Black’s rook!

I checked it on Fritz, and of course I was right: in my line, White keeps the plus pawn. If Black varies (now I didn’t put this variation in the book, as there was no need to lengthen the book with near duplicate variations) then White plays in the same way and also stays a pawn up. But after Tait’s “exclam move” then White loses back the extra pawn, and the machine drops right down to equal.

Let’s go through this move by move. Note that there were no relevant updates in this line, so my note that was written for Everyman (for Attacking Chess: The King’s Gambit) is exactly the same in my updated, soon to be self published version, The Fischer King’s Gambit.

Here are the lines—this is from the game Metz – Schlenker, Game 95 in my updated book.

The game starts like this:

Game 95

Metz, Hartmut – Schlenker, Rainer

FRG corr Germany, 1986

1.e4 e5

2.f4 d5

3.exd5 c6

4.Qe2 cxd5

5.fxe5 Nc6

6.Nf3 Bg4

7.Qf2

The first note to the game is here, and there are more on the way, but I’m leaving them out for this illustration as they are not relevant to the issue. Let’s get straight to the scene of the crime!

7… Bxf3

8.Qxf3 Nd4

At this point I give a note, the critical variation goes like this: 8… Qh4+ 9.g3 Qd4 10.Qf4 Qxe5+ and here I stop for a subvariation. Following is exactly how it was written for Everyman, and exactly how it appears in The Fischer King’s Gambit: (No better is the fancy 10…Nxe5!? 11.Nc3 Qxf4 12.gxf4 Nf3+ 13.Kd1 Ne7 14.Bg2 Nh4 15.Bxd5 and White keeps the plus pawn).

What’s wrong with this note? Nothing. It’s a nice clear note, there’s no reason to add or subtract.

Now here’s the note as rewritten, with new material added, by Jonathan Tait.

(the fancy 10…Nxe5!? is no better: 11 Nc3 Qxf4 12 gxf4 Nf3+ 13 Kd1 Ne7 14 Bg2 Nh4 15 Bxd5 or 13…0-0-0 14Nxd5! Rxd5 15 Bg2 and White keeps the extra pawn)

Let’s do a side by side comparison, mine on top, Tait’s below.

Taylor: (No better is the fancy 10…Nxe5!? 11.Nc3 Qxf4 12.gxf4 Nf3+ 13.Kd1 Ne7 14.Bg2 Nh4 15.Bxd5 and White keeps the plus pawn).

Tait: (the fancy 10…Nxe5!? is no better: 11 Nc3 Qxf4 12 gxf4 Nf3+ 13 Kd1 Ne7 14 Bg2 Nh4 15 Bxd5 or 13…0-0-0 14Nxd5! Rxd5 15 Bg2 and White keeps the extra pawn)

Now the first thing that jumps out at you (and I think this is what caught my eye when I was leafing through the page proofs, and then I saw the false variation second) is that Tait has rewritten the text (and he did this throughout the butcher edit). I write “No better is the fancy”—and then I give the variation followed by the conclusion. Clear, simple, good writing. I’ve been doing this for a long time! My first chess book, The Rubinstein Variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defense, came out in 1984! But Tait breaks up both the text and the variation, starts with “the fancy” then gives a move, then breaks up the variation with more text, thus making the note choppy and poorly written. Moving on, Tait at the end rewrites my line. I say “and White keeps the plus pawn.” Tait rewrites and says “and White keeps the extra pawn.” Not a big change there at the end, but “plus pawn” has a little zing from the minor alliteration, while “extra pawn” is OK but hackneyed. Basically Tait takes the writing down to his level. Note that even this is against protocol for editors, who are not supposed to rewrite text (they can make suggestions, but not rewrite on their own) and there is a good reason for this. Here one sees the editor knock down the quality of a professional’s work.

But now let’s get to the heart of the matter, the chess criminal matter. You see that Tait adds a variation, not present in the original, before his final rewriting: “or 13…0-0-0 14.Nxd5! Rxd5 15 Bg2 and White keeps the extra pawn.” Now of course I had seen that Black can defend his d-pawn with 13… 0-0-0 instead of 13… Ne7 as I give, but what would be the point of an extra note? White goes a pawn ahead after the simple 14.Bg2 just as I give after 13… Ne7. So adding a note is first of all pointless.

But pointless is one thing, and wrong is another. Inserting a wrong variation is criminal. Tait’s note goes “13…0-0-0 14.Nxd5! Rxd5 15 Bg2 and White keeps the extra pawn”

Note that Tait does not give the consistent 14.Bg2 after which White does indeed go a pawn up, much as in the line I gave. Instead he inserts the blunder 14.Nxd5 and gives it an exclam!

Appalling! Anyone with a brain or a chess computer can see that White does not keep the “extra” or even the plus pawn after 14.Nxd5? Black plays 14… Rxd5 15.Bg2 (here Tait stops the moves, so he doesn’t have to give the obvious follow 15… Rf5! Now White, a piece down, must play 16.Bxf3, since of course 16.Bh3 loses to 16… Nh6. And after 16.Bxf3 Black recaptures his pawn: 16… Rxf4, and Mr. Fritz, who had White at nearly plus one, drops right down to equality.

In plain English, White has thrown away his advantage with the “Tait exclam” move 14.Nxd5.

Appalling! I say it again. The editor has not only rewritten the passage to the detriment of the text, he has added a completely false variation, a blunder so simple it can be fact checked and found wanting in one second on any chess engine. Any master can see without benefit of electronic help that this blunder (14.Nxd5) loses White’s extra pawn, while 14.Bg2 would have won it. And Tait gave this move an exclam!

Now up to this point, I had been complaining vehemently to Byron Jacobs (whose title is Everyman’s “chief advisor”) about the butcher edit, and every time I complained, Byron gave the same nonsensical reply that Tait’s work was a “good normal edit.” He even defended the reversal of meaning (changing my “discouraged” to Tait’s “not discouraged.” Horrible! But adding a demonstrably false variation was something even Byron Jacobs could not defend.

What did he do? Did he fire Tait and return my manuscript to its original, correct state? Ha!

No.

He tried blackmail.

This is the key paragraph from Byron Jacob’s email to me of February 25, 2014.

“You may say there is an obvious solution which is to publish the book – more or less – as you originally submitted it. I could do this, but it would have the unfortunate side effect of immediately terminating any working relationship between us”

Oh Man! When Byron Jacobs blackmails you, you know you are being blackmailed! Look how cool he thinks he is: “I could do this” he says, but he won’t. In essence what he says is you accept the butcher edit, the wrong diagrams, the chopped up text, even the false variations—or I will “terminate” you! He thinks he’s so tough …

What a pathetic little sleaze ball.

Well, what could I do? I certainly wasn’t going to let a whiny little sleaze ball like Byron Jacobs blackmail me.

So I went to the top dog, the Managing Editor of Everyman books, Mark Bicknell.

I wrote a detailed letter explaining the situation, I gave six horrible examples of Jonathan Tait’s butcher edit, and I put the Metz – Schlenker game front and center. Here’s what I wrote about the critical false variation:

“Jonathan Tait inserts an incorrect variation—but my name is on the book! So if I accepted this edit (there is no chance of that happening) then I would have to accept responsibility for the beginner’s error he inserted into my correct analysis. Let’s consider this variation from the above mentioned Game 92, Metz – Schlenker. I give the variation in the note to Black’s 8th move: “8… Qh4+ 9.g3 Qd4 10.Qf4 Nxe5 11.Nc3 Qxf4 12.gxf4 Nf3+ 13.Kd1 Ne7 14.Bg2 Nh4 15.Bxd5 and White keeps the plus pawn.” Without consulting me, Jonathan adds the following variation; again, let me repeat: Jonathan is adding this variation on his own. It’s not in my Chessbase notes, not in my text. In fact, in my opinion it’s completely unnecessary! White is winning a pawn in any case, as is easy to see. Nonetheless JT adds this note—and this is why the editor should not add notes to a professional’s book: “13… 0-0-0 14.Nxd5! Rxd5 15.Bg2 and White keeps the extra pawn.”

What’s wrong with this? Just about everything, starting with the fact JT added the variation on his own, not “suggesting” (to quote you) as in proper editor’s duties. Then it’s obvious the inserted variation is wrong. JT gives the blunder 14.Nxd5 an exclamation point. In fact, correct is the obvious (which is why I didn’t feel I needed another note there) 14.Bg2 which does in fact win a pawn. Anyway, going back to Jonathan’s “exclam” move his note continues falsely as follows: “14.Nxd5! Rxd5 15.Bg2 and White keeps the extra pawn.” But of course, as anyone of moderate rating can see, White does not keep the extra pawn here. Black just answers 15… Rf5 and after White’s forced reply 16.Bxf3 simply recaptures his pawn: 16… Rxf4 with equality. Put this on an engine and it’s even easier. White has clear advantage until Jonathan’s “exclam move” 14.Nxd5, and then the machine drops down to equal!

Imagine for a moment if the book actually came out with this variation in it: reviewers would jump on it, asking why Taylor doesn’t use an engine to check his work, or why didn’t Everyman check the variations—and this blunder would cast doubt on the whole book that I worked on so hard! I cannot allow my reputation to be trashed in this way. And I have to ask, do you want Everyman’s reputation to be trashed in this way?”

That’s a pretty good question that I asked at the end. Did Bicknell want Everyman’s reputation trashed? The book hadn’t come out yet, so as Managing Editor, he could easily save the day: fire the butcher edit guy, Jonathan Tait as well as the blackmailer Byron Jacobs, hire a new editor to put the diagrams in the right places, and leave the text alone!

Did he do that? Ha! Not caring about Everyman’s reputation, or his own for that matter, he resorted to blackmail!

Here’s the key passage of Mark Bicknell’s blackmail letter of March 7, 2014:

I would urge you very strongly to follow Byron/JT’s advice. We could, in the final event, undo all of JT’s editing and publish your original submission. In our opinion, this would not do justice to the concept of our commission or to the reputation that you as author and we as publisher have earned. It would also mean that any future collaboration would now have to be reviewed. With best regards, Mark Bicknell

Let’s take this apart: I should accept Byron Jacobs and Jonathan Tait’s “good normal edit”—which in reality was a butcher edit, full of non-words, random and incorrect annotations, false variations, bad English, missing paragraphs, badly rewritten sentences, and even diagrams in the wrong places. Oh Gee, sounds good so far!

Continuing: This will help my “reputation as an author”—uh, I get it, now I’ll look like an idiot. Wonderful, yes?

And then “future collaboration would now have to be reviewed”—which means, of course, blackmail.

Let’s do another side by side comparison between Byron Jacobs’ blackmail letter of February 25 and Mark Bicknell’s blackmail letter or March 7, with Byron’s on top.

Byron Jacobs: “You may say there is an obvious solution which is to publish the book – more or less – as you originally submitted it. I could do this, but it would have the unfortunate side effect of immediately terminating any working relationship between us”

Mark Bicknell: “I would urge you very strongly to follow Byron/JT’s advice. We could, in the final event, undo all of JT’s editing and publish your original submission. In our opinion, this would not do justice to the concept of our commission or to the reputation that you as author and we as publisher have earned. It would also mean that any future collaboration would now have to be reviewed.”

As I noted before, when Byron blackmails you, you know it! Check out that “terminating!” But Bicknell shows “class:” when he blackmails you, you have to read it twice because his prose is so wimpy: “future collaboration would now have to be reviewed.” Say what? Oh, I see, you don’t go along, we’ll “review” your contracts and not renew your collaboration. Got it: blackmail.

Bicknell shows so much class ……… Not!

Mark Bicknell is just another pathetic little sleaze ball!

Well, what could I do? I certainly wasn’t going to let this disgusting chess criminal blackmail me.

So … I went to the even higher top dog!

Every Everyman book has the following line right in the front:

“Everyman is the registered trade mark of Random House Inc. and is used in this work under licence from Random House Inc.”

I just verified this yet again: the same line appears in both my The Budapest Gambit from 2009 and in The Killer Dutch from 2015.

Ah Ha!

So I found out who the CEO of Random House was, namely Markus Dohle.

Mr. Dohle is on record as saying “the authors are the center of what we are doing and the alignment with our authors is extremely important for us. It has always been and will be in the future.”

Sounded promising, but I didn’t expect much. So I wrote to Markus Dohle—and he was helpful! Hard to believe, isn’t it? Apparently not all publishers are low life lying sleaze bags (though we will soon meet some more who are!).

Anyway, going back to Mr. Dohle, he dispatched Random House’s chief UK lawyer, one Vanessa Milton, to put out the fire.

I told Ms. Milton what deal was acceptable to me: I would keep the advances for the King’s Gambit book, as well as the three advances I had been paid for “future books” that were in the Everyman publishing pipeline. These were to be on the Queen’s Gambit, on Magnus Carlsen, and the Two Knights Defense. I would recover my intellectual property rights for all four of those books. I would be free to sell the King’s Gambit book as well as the other three to any interested publisher, the only restriction being that I had to change the titles, which was fine with me.

So I sent this proposal to Ms. Milton, she told Mark Bicknell to jump, he asked, how high?—and the deal was done in a matter of days. On April 30, 2014, Mark Bicknell agreed to the exact terms given above.

Now let’s step back for a moment. At this point in time, two things were going on. On the chess writing front, people were going crazy calling for the book. My King’s Gambit book had been announced by Everyman, listed on Amazon—and then withdrawn without explanation. Meanwhile GM John Shaw’s book, The King’s Gambit, made the nonsensical claim that the King Bishop’s Gambit, always played by Bobby Fischer, was refuted! Not! By this time word was out that I had refuted the Shaw “refutation” (I had) and the correct analysis was in my book, which of course it was. I was getting emails from around the world asking when they could buy the book!

And then, on the other front, on the personal front, my life was falling apart. I will not go into this here: let’s just say that things started bad and got worse than I could imagine. This downward spiral would continue for over a year

It was all I could do, once I got the above mentioned signed PDF from Mark Bicknell that I owned all the rights again (April 30, 2014), to send my book out to Allard Hoogland, publisher at New in Chess in the Netherlands.

I retitled it per agreement as Winning with the King Bishop’s Gambit. On a side note, my third and indeed final title for this same book, The Fischer King’s Gambit, is I think the best. But anyway, at this moment, sending it to New in Chess, the book’s title was Winning with the King Bishop’s Gambit.

Things started well! Seeing that here was an excellent book with a ready-made market and worldwide interest, Allard Hoogland jumped at the chance to publish the book! Here are some excerpts from the flurry of emails he sent me.

We have looked at your book Win with the King’s Bishop Gambit. We like it.

We want to publish the book and we will!

We are taking this title onboard for our Fall 2014 program. That program was already closed, but we will squeeze it through.

Attached the contract signed by me

I have instructed my bookkeeper to pay through Paypal as indicated by you.

I was in fact paid, a moderate advance, which was much needed at the time.

But the most important line to me, that Hoogland wrote, was the following:

“There are only a very few, very minor corrections to be done.”

I loved that: “very few, very minor.” In other words, no butcher edit! Hoogland recognized that the book was done, finished, could basically be published as is—and of course, that would save his company some expense! Given the already great demand for the book, New in Chess stood to make some serious money, and I’d even get a little more, from the royalties.

But then …

Along came a snake in the grass, a lousy, slimy, ugly snake—oh, do I have to tell you? Mark Bicknell!

In the midst of the “love-fest emails” Hoogland sent one more. And here’s the critical line:

I need, just as a matter of courtesy, to briefly check with Mark Bicknell. I assume you have no objection. My question to him will just be if it is correct that you and Everyman have parted their ways.

Have you ever had that sinking feeling?

I knew, in my heart of hearts, that it was all over the moment I read that email. On the other hand, I had the emailed PDF document from Bicknell wherein he accepted the deal brokered by Random House. I did, legally, own all the rights.

But I still knew it was over.

Not so many days later, Hoogland suddenly had trouble with the contract. Then he wanted a new chapter. Then he wanted to take out a chapter.

Then he realized how ridiculous all that sounded, and went straight for it, in his email of July 25, 2014. I have never heard from him again. Here’s the final email complete and uncut:

Dear Tim,

Thank you for your message.

I return all the rights on Win with the King’s Bishop Gambt.

You can retain the advance we payed you.

Best,

Allard

What’s interesting about this (besides the misspelling of the words “Gambit” and “paid”) is that the book was already approved, was going to be published that fall with “very few, very minor corrections”—and he had already paid me an advance! And the book stood to earn substantial money, as the demand was already there!

Now I don’t know what Bicknell told Hoogland, but I suspect some whacked out conversation like this: “Yes, Taylor does own all the rights, but he’s a troublemaker! He doesn’t want errors put in his chess books!” and Hoogland replies, “We don’t want a troublemaker like that! What kind of guy is he, doesn’t want to have errors put in his books?”

So in the end I’ve was paid twice for this book, got the rights back both times, and it still wasn’t published!

Then I made the rounds of the rest of the world’s chess publishers, Quality Chess, Gambit, Mongoose, etc—but by this time all the publishers had the word. Taylor—troublemaker! Wants honest books! Arrrggghhhh!

None of the publishers even wanted to see the book—excellent book, well written, no editing needed, great demand—nope, can’t publish something like that!

So they all turned me down immediately; some were more nasty than others.

And King’s Gambit fans around the world were left quite confused!

Meanwhile my life and family situation got worse, and I couldn’t do anything more for quite a while on the publishing front.

In fact, things got so bad that the only thing I could concentrate was survival. And to survive I needed money.

Let’s step back a moment: we’ve already seen Mark Bicknell the chess criminal, and Bicknell the blackmailer, and just now, Bicknell the liar, in that he signed the deal brokered by Random House, whereby I was free to sell my books—a deal which Bicknell just torpedoed.

But we haven’t seen Bicknell the thief yet!

Well, I’m about as tired as you are, dear reader, going through all this crap, but I assure you this is the last thing. I’ll get through it as quickly as I can.

At this point in our story, I was in Los Angeles, more or less homeless, in desperate need of funds. It occurred to me that I was owed royalty money for my previous eight books from Everyman!

So I had to grit my teeth and write to Mark Bicknell.

And he wrote back, email of March 30, 2015 and said my royalties for 2014 were $221.70. He said that only one of my eight previous books, Bird’s Opening, had earned royalties. Now I didn’t think this statement was true, and the number seemed very low, but I was in no shape to complain. I gave Bicknell my bank details and he did a wire transfer.

And guess what he paid me:

$201.70

Twenty dollars short.

I complained.

Bicknell gave some weird reply about a check that made no sense. It seemed to mean that he was going to send a check to make up the difference, but why not another wire transfer, since he started that way?

So I wrote to him, email of April 23, 2015:

Just to make sure I have this right, you mailed a check? Tim

And Bicknell replied as follows, email of April 23 (the same day). Here it is, the capitals are Bicknell’s:

NO

And I have never heard from him again, and I haven’t got my $20 either.

Bicknell just couldn’t resist stealing the money. Other people go to jail for things like theft and blackmail—Bicknell thinks he can get away with it.

And so ends my portrait of this chess criminal.

As for the book: I have revised and updated and given the final title to it of The Fischer King’s Gambit. It is complete and ready to go. I will not revise it any more.

My life, though still difficult, has improved, and now I am ready for action.

I have to self publish The Fischer King’s Gambit, and I can’t do it alone.

So one more time I have to go to Markus Dohle. On the one side we have Mark Bicknell, who is licensed by Random House. And Bicknell is a liar, a blackmailer, a thief and a chess criminal. He broke the contract that Random House brokered.

He stole, right in plain sight, and acted proud of it.

Meanwhile, I am an author, and as Markus Dohle says, “authors are the center of what we are doing.”

I have sent Mr. Dohle a Fed Ex letter today describing the situation.

I trust he will do the right thing, and if he does, the Fischer King’s Gambit will soon be published.