Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920 on June 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Bedfordshire’s very first county matches have been documented in the book Chess in Bedfordshire, F.Dickens and G.L.White (Leeds 1933) see below:
For detail, I have added newspaper reports detailing some of the matches described.
1908 return match Beds Advertiser and Luton Times Fri Mar, 20
The Bedfordshire Advertiser Friday March 11th, 1904
The Beds Advertiser and Luton Times Feb 22nd. 1907
Old Bedford Road, Luton
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920, tagged F.Dickens chess on January 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »
In case you thought that Dickens’s victory was something of a fluke, I have found a game where he draws with Jacques Mieses, a leading player of his day.
Here’s the final position.
The position after 20…Kg8. Note that it is Mieses going for the draw. If you play through the game you will see that white misses a clear win with 16 Nb5. Better would have been Nxe6 Qxe6 with Qf3, after which the double threat of the pin on the queen and the rook en prise cannot be met (see below).
What white should have played. Black is lost.
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920, tagged lasker in luton on January 23, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Courtesy of The British Newspaper Archive (Beds Advertiser and Luton Times Feb 21st 1908), I have unearthed evidence that the former world champion Dr. Emanuel Lasker performed a simul in my home town, his record being W13 D3 L1.
It’s an entertaining little read. Even though the world champion arrived late after being directed to Leighton Buzzard en route, he nonetheless gave a good account of himself against reasonable opposition. A piece well worth reading, I have given the author F.Dickens’s win below the excerpt.
E.Lasker V F. Dickens final position
17. …Bxh5. The queen is captured.
Where Lasker played. The old town hall before Luton’s fiesty, and decidedly immigrant population burnt it down. I wonder what he thought of Luton? He must have stayed the night at least.
![The Town Hall smouldering [Z1306-75]](https://mccreadyandchess.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/the-town-hall-smouldering-z1306-75.jpg)
Evidence of the above.
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
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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