Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1980-2000 | Leave a Comment »
The Luton Chess Club trophy has reappeared on show at the club courtesy of long standing member, and former champion, Peter Montgomery.
But who selected and purchased that boy back in the mid-nineties? Here’s 4 clues to help with the answer:
Super tough clue: the trophy was bought on a Friday in late September in time for the AGM. Before he picked it up, he stopped off at Burger King and had a spicy beanburger, french fries and coke downstairs in the restaurant, which he paid for with his giro. He spent most of the time looking through the windows in St. George’s Square thinking about not very much at all whilst eating.
Tough clue: he’s rubbish at chess.
Medium clue: he had been the tournament organizer at the club for a couple of years already and was left with the responsibility.
Easy clue: he’s known around the world as Luton’s most handsome chess player of all time. 🙂
MJM
Posted in Luton Chess Club | Leave a Comment »
On this day 2010, my daughter Grace plays chess with me during the dreaded covid lockdown when my parental duties were elevated somewhat.
Posted in My daughter | Leave a Comment »
This individual is hard to track down. I first encountered him in the 1908 British Chess Magazine, and referred to him in the following post towards the end of it. Our clash of future champions
In the 1933 publication Chess in Bedfordshire he can be found playing board 1 for the county (as the link above shows) but here we learn that his achievements went beyond that. It would appear that he was an eminent member of the Bedfordshire chess scene of his day, although I must add one not often mentioned or written about. This may be due to him being from Leighton Buzzard and not Luton or Bedford.
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920 | Leave a Comment »
I am by no means an expert and may well be wrong here but do forgive me for thinking that what you see below is not how Karpov used to play when he was young.
Posted in Chess | 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 History of Bedfordshire Chess in the 19th century | Leave a Comment »
Nasty business from the emerald isle.
Posted in Quaint Chess History | 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 Quaint Chess History | 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 in the 19th century | 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 History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920 | Leave a Comment »
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A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
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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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