Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on September 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »
The content below has been gleaned from the S.C.C.U Bulletins only. Please note images 32 and 57 are of historical importance; image 32 shows the only instance of GM Sergio Mariotti competing for Bedfordshire with his brother Paolo, and image 57 shows GM James Plaskett making his debut for Bedfordshire.
Posted in Trivia on September 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »
This comes from knowledgeable and respectable chess friend Mark Ruston who went to school in Charlton, London. There he was taught by former British chess champion IM Bob Wade OBE. Where did IM Wade live in London and which former British champion did he rent a room from in his palatial mansion?
Helpful but chronicled clue: whilst teaching south of Charlton in New Eltham one summer, I used to cycle to The British Library to look at the chess books available to the public in its reference section (especially Sargeant’s A Century of British Chess). En route, and after a tough climb, where IM Wade lived I fell for because it was the first part of the city I rode through that was very green and quiet, and not like London at all. Still to this day, I often think if I could choose a part of London to live in, that would be it.
Shorter helpful clue
It would be more accurate to hyphenate the term ‘champion’ in the question.
Posted in Trivia on September 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Which online bank and global payment platform has a founder who shares his name with a popular Soviet world chess champion?
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.
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