The printer is confirmed as down and out for the remainder of the year. So once again, images are captured by phone.
Archive for the ‘History of Bedfordshire Chess’ Category
Bedfordshire 1985
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess, tagged Nicholas McBride amazing chess player on November 14, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Bedfordshire 1984
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on November 12, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Bedfordshire 1983
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess, tagged bedfordshire chess 1983 on November 10, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Printer down, down, down. Sorry. Many images today are quite readable though.
Confirmed here, whilst I was on holiday with my wife and daughter at the beautiful ski resort Bakuriani, Georgia, near scumbag Stalin’s home town. Click on the link but go to the pictures at the bottom for Edward Winter’s confirmation.
https://mccreadyandchess.com/2015/01/13/what-the-dickens/
Bedfordshire 1982
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on November 10, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Printer is out and unlikely to be resurrected. Not a huge problem as the quality of the images is improving but it is much harder than expected.
Bedfordshire 1981
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on November 9, 2016| Leave a Comment »
The printer does not work so I must use my phone, I hope that the quality is better today.
Bedfordshire 1980
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on November 9, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I regret to say that the printer is not working at the moment, which has impaired the quality of some columns below. Generally they get better the further down they go. 1981 already complete and in much better quality, soon to be uploaded.
William Ward in the EDO
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on August 10, 2016| Leave a Comment »
My Bedfordshire playing partners, if you missed out on the months of work that culminated in Our Clash of Future Champions https://mccreadyandchess.com/2016/02/12/our-clash-of-future-champions/…well there it is again. In it I argued that William Ward (of London) as he was known, grew up in Bedfordshire and retained some connection, however slight, with his home town Luton and its, then, thriving chess scene throughout his career probably being the strongest player to have lived in and played for Luton still to this day.
He is the only player with a Bedfordshire connection that can be found in the EDO historical ratings website. Further details concerning his approximated strength and achievements can be found here: http://www.edochess.ca/players/p562.html.
The ‘Old Master’ visits Bedford
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on July 5, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I think we can all agree that at 81 years old Mr. Meises should have been proud of himself over his accomplishment. Note that amongst those who drew was the future Headmaster of Bedford Modern Junior School T. I. (Idris) Hussey.
Jacques Meises
Was little Bedfordshire once unworthy of London cartographers’ consideration?
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess, Quaint Chess History on May 27, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I could cycle from Bedfordshire top to bottom inside an hour with ease (and that’s with a break in between) before heading into Hertfordshire and beyond at my fittest.
In the forties, after the war there was little chess action until the Bedfordshire League resumed in 1945. Its a bloody good thing that upon its a resumption, the teams in the Beds. league were from Bedfordshire. Bletchley, who in 1975 would become Milton Keynes, were thankfully decades away from thrashing joining us still. I’ve just seen the team they fielded against poor old Oxford University, As you may know during WW2 the codebreakers working for the government were employed there, several being former British champions. The official line was that Britain’s greatest mathematicians were in great need to save our nation against the supposed ‘terrible threat of the nazis’.
Unofficially, the chess playing collective sat around all day playing blitz and smoking cigars, then at the day’s end they would take a quick glance at a few Japanese ciphers before wandering off to the nearest drinking establishment where they would consume too many pints of ale and punch a policeman on their way home, as was customary in those days (and today too come to think of it).
A dumbed-down British attempt to document Bletchley Park came out recently called ‘The Imitation Game’…I couldn’t watch it all so can’t comment but I did notice it exuded a level of flatness and mediocrity that British films typically suffer from, and the exemplification of the code-breaker machines was laughable to say the least.
The Bletchley team on the 2nd of December 1945.
1. C.H.O’D Alexander 2. H. Golombek 3. Dr J.M. Aitken 4. Dr I.J. Good 5. N.A. Perkins 6. Sgt. Jacobs (US Army) 7. Sgt. Gilbert 8. M.A. Chamberlain 9. P.J. Hilton 10. W.R. Cox 11. D. Rees 12. Lt. A. Levinson (US Army)
I suspect it would have reemed whitewashed every Bedfordshire team of its day and kindly asked to find alternative arrangements.
More on Mardle
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess, tagged D. V. Mardle chess on May 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »
D. V. Mardle, undoubtedly Bedfordshire’s strongest player in the mid-twentieth century can be seen in the picture below :
In the following cutting, his friend and admirer T. S. Sweby gives a brief account of where Dennis went after he left Luton. As you may know he would go on to receive a CBE for his work on Polio, which he suffered from for many years.
Lastly, the picture above can be found here http://www.saund.co.uk/rgs/pdfs/viewer.html?file=http://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/pdfs/1950universitieschessannual.pdf, therein lies some analysis of Mardle’s play against J. E. Littlewood.
-
Recent Posts
Archives
…on what this site initially became…on what this site is now becoming…on what this site cannot become…
Categories
- Academia
- Bedfordshire Chess
- Chess
- Chess in Thailand
- Dear Ken
- Documentaries
- FIDE
- History of Bedfordshire Chess
- Humour
- Kasparyan
- Life beyond the chess board
- Luton Chess Club
- Meme
- Moves I could never play
- My daughter
- My own endeavours
- My Own Games
- My own warped humour
- On-line journal
- Personal Interest & Experience
- Postmodern History
- Quaint Chess History
- Reflections
- Reviews
- Selected on-line games
- Sources of inspiration
- Tournament Chess
- Trivia
- Viz inspired material
- Who wants to be a millionaire chess special
- World Championships Analytics
Posts which McCready is mighty pleased with
Luton & The University of Bedfordshire Chess Club
01582 743921/07710036246 (Humuyan)Tuesdays from 7.30 pm, The Library, Ground Floor
Please go to:
https://www.lutonchessclub.com/Blog Stats
- 32,143 hits
-
Join 39 other subscribers
-
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.
Gallery
-
- I’m either 10 or 11 here
-
- 1982, myself versus Brian from Sunderland.
-
- At the Thai Junior chess championships. My daughter of course.
-
- Pattaya 2011
-
- 2011
-
- Thai Junior Championships
-
- 2008
-
- 2011
-
- Around 2011
-
- 2011
-
- Pattaya 2009
-
- 2011
-
- Kuwait 2008
-
- 2012
-
- 2012
-
- 2011 BKK Chess club
-
- 2011
-
- 2011 Thai Open
-
- 2011 Thai Open
-
- 2013 approx
-
- Around 2014
-
- 2010
-
- 2012
-
- Around 2011
-
- 2011
-
- 2011
-
- 2013
-
- Around 2011
-
- Around 2011
-
- 2020
-
- 2011
-
- 2008
-
- 2011
-
- 2013 or thereabouts
-
- 2010
-
- 2017
-
- 2014?
-
- 2010
-
- 2024
-
- 2024
-
- 2024
-
-
To add comments, please see the bell at the top of the page.
McCreadyandChess 