Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on May 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
How are we to make sense of reportage below? Unless we can say when inter alia chess became the most popular board game in England we are limited. Although I have a background in both chess in draughts, I cannot give an account of which was more popular at the time in the content below. I suspect draughts was by some distance but cannot be sure.
Not just in Bedford, Leighton Buzzard too.
Isn’t this how it should be done?
Posted in Quaint Chess History on May 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Quaint Chess History on May 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
How the times have changed. It’s highly doubtful that anyone takes the boat to Australia now. But if they did and the voyages offered the same as the reportage below then there’s chess, backgammon and draughts tables for you to use to fill in the time. You never know, it might improve your chess!
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on May 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Documented on this site some nine years ago was Blackburne’s visit to Bedford in 1891. Please note, I have discovered reportage which gives a more detailed account of that evening and is well worth a read. It is a substantial improvement on what was previously posted -content-wise. Enjoy.
MJM
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on May 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Sincere apologies for not being methodical and explaining who F. Dickens is. I’ve lost count of the number of posts that he appears in on this site, so please do scroll through the History of Bedfordshire Chess section or just search for his name in the search bar. I can’t link all posts here, I would be swamped. Exploration is better than picking up on some synopsis.
Anyway, here is reportage of him performing a simul, showing his favourite game to his audience and boasting about his win over the world champion E. Lasker (understandable as I too would boast if I had beaten the world champion!). Okay, perhaps he didn’t boast and was just proud of himself, how can we tell….oh it says he was ‘modest’, doesn’t it?
We may wish to reflect upon Mr. F. Dickens’s, the schoolmaster from Kensworth, favourite game and what can be gleaned from it. Establishing how popular that game in particular was in his day is rather tricky but it is safe to say it was indeed well publicized and thus well known, as it is today. We could argue it was already dated back then and question how up to date he was with chess events but let’s not go there…perhaps its better to ask how well read was he? Since I cannot criticize anyone who has played chess for Luton in the past, let’s leave it there!
Posted in Chess on May 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Are you into the sort of game where one of the very best in the world gets absolutely massacred by a devastating sacrifice? Do you like watching kings run for cover in the middle game with resignation being the only form of escape?
Game 1 Beliavsky V Nunn, Wijk Aan Zee 1985
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1103322
Game 2 Plaskett V Miles, Lugano 1985
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1097818
Mark. J. McCready
A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
Not perhaps, but quintessentially, Old Tom Sweby is best thought of as a passionate devotee to the newspapers he wrote for. He was well read and knowledgeable of the Bedfordshire chess scene and well beyond, given that he was the president of the S.C.C.U. once upon a time. He was generally well-respected and rubbed shoulders with many, if not all, of those eminent within British chess circles. It would, however, be a critical mistake to see his column is primary source material entirely. That it is not. You will also find secondary source material quoted too, and the reliability of that is not quite as Tom hoped. Given that he wrote for decades, this is to some degree inevitable, and after all we are all prone to error whether we realize it or not. Thankfully, with regards to old Tom Sweby, they are infrequent and for the most part old Tom continued to document events and developments in the Bedfordshire league from the get go as best he could but, of course, everything lies open to interpretation. Despite this, and generally speaking. this does indeed make him informative and thus worth reading. Dare I say his columns constitute a narrative describing the latest developments, match reports and changing nature of the Beds league...he knew his audience and wrote according. This manifested itself over decades but brevity was always in play courtesy of the restictions imposed by writing a column. Should you wish to read a in instrumental figure of the Beds' league post WW2, you are quite welcome to peruse what has been posted here... . :-) I should, however, point out that as the decades wore on he gradually moved on away from narratives concerning the Bedfordshire league towards affairs both historical and international. The reasons for this are multifarous, old age was a predominante factor presumably, however, the bottom line is with regards to how the Bedfordshire chess scene developed post WW2: old Tom Sweby is your go to guy. He wrote more about chess in Bedforshire than anyone else did but given he was a Lutonian and writing for a Luton newspaper there is both bias and greater coverage of his hometown than the rest of the county.
To add comments, please see the bell at the top of the page.
McCreadyandChess 