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!
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McCreadyandChess 