oldest chess clubs

8/3/2019 Oldest Chess Clubs

1/12

==== ====

If You Want to Improve Chess Check this out:

www.ajedrezdesdematamoros.blogspot.com

==== ====Which are the Oldest Chess Clubs?

I have been prompted to write on the topic of early British chess clubs by a

recent thread posted at the English Chess Forum's history section. Towards

the end of August, Ray Collett launched a new thread on the subject and there

were many quick responses. I have monitored the replies up to 9 September

and more may well have been added since. I noted that there have been some

contributions with interesting new information, but also several that either

gave inaccurate information or asked questions to which nobody had (yet)

given the correct answers. Rather than deal those points piecemeal on the

Forum, I thought it better to write a Kibitzer about it.

In the first part of this article, I look briefly at the theoretical justification for

studying chess clubs; i.e., why people who are not specially interested in

chess might nevertheless consider the subject important. In the second part, I

look at some specific cases of early chess clubs and address points raised in

the Forum debate. In the final section, I present a few games played in early

chess clubs.

Why study chess clubs?

Historians, in the past twenty years or so, have taken a great interest in the

origins and early growth of middle-class clubs and societies as part of the

development of civil society in western Europe from the seventeenth to the

nineteenth centuries. The classic work on this subject, focusing on the earlier

part of that period, is Professor Peter Clark's book British Clubs and Societies

1580-1800: The Origins of an Associational World (Oxford 2000). Clark has

been, since 2000, Professor of European Urban History at the University of

Helsinki.

Chess clubs, with a couple of exceptions noted below, hardly emerged in the

period covered by Clark's book. Nor is chess mentioned in J. Barry's 1985

doctoral thesis for Oxford University, "The Cultural Life of Bristol 1640-

1775" which I read while preparing my own dissertation. I doubt that this was

due to any deficiency in the author's research. He noted that card tables and

backgammon sets proliferated in wealthy homes after 1700 but that later in

the century there was a crackdown on gambling games. This certainly

continued up to the early Victorian period, when there was new legislation,

and this would also have contributed to chess gaining a hold.

As yet, chess clubs have probably not received the degree of attention that

they deserve in the social history of the early and mid-nineteenth century,
http://www.ajedrezdesdematamoros.blogspot.com/http://www.ajedrezdesdematamoros.blogspot.com/


2/12

compared with the attention that has been given to sports clubs such as the

Marylebone Cricket Club, Wimbledon, and the early association football and

rugby football clubs. An exception here is H. J. G. M. Scholten's 1999

doctoral thesis on the social-cultural background of chess clubs in the

Netherlands in the nineteenth century. Scholten analysed different types of

clubs: the social background of their membership, their rules, their frequency

of meeting and so on. Some of what he found was probably peculiar to thecircumstances in the Netherlands and not directly comparable to England, one

main difference being that the Dutch had no big city clubs with professional

players.

Chess is inherently meritocratic; Jack can be as good as his master. The chess

club, in the United Kingdom at least, was essentially a creation of the

development of associational culture in the nineteenth century in the context

of the industrial revolution and gradual opening up of society on the basis of

talents instead of inherited privilege.

Early chess clubs possibly arose from people finding they had the game in

common when they met in other sociable contexts. Clubs meeting in public

venues were, like their private precursors, at first inward-looking and

convivial, but soon became predominantly concerned with the game itself, as

an 1849 article in the Quarterly Review noted: 'Now there is a club in almost

every considerable provincial town.' Later, clubs became interested in

competing with each other.

Primary source evidence for a chess club having existed in a particular townat a particular date is not that hard to find, especially nowadays when so many

local newspapers have been digitised permitting word-searches for terms such

as "chess club." What this will generally not tell you is what kind of club it

was (formal or informal), its membership, how long it had existed or whether

it was ephemeral. So it is easier to find an earliest date for a chess club having

existed in particular towns than it is to trace subsequent collapses and reestablishments,

splits and mergers between, say, the 1830s and 1840s when

clubs started to multiply, and the 1880s and 1890s when they first begin to

compete with one another in cups and leagues.

An important type of primary source, highly valued by historians when they

can get it, is actual physical evidence that a chess club existed. This is most

likely to take the form of the printed rules of a club, since these would have

been circulated around towns and copies may yet survive in public libraries or

private hands. Printing the rules was a good way of showing that a club

formally existed and then of publicising it; also they sometimes list the

officers and members of the club. Not many rule-books of this type seem to

survive. Those of the Manchester Chess Club (1817) and Edinburgh Chess

Club (1822) are the earliest.

John Townsend pointed out on the Forum that subscription lists for books can

provide evidence that a club existed, in particular citing the 1836 book of


3/12

Alexander McDonnell's games to which several clubs and club members

subscribed. The following are mentioned there: Belfast, Bristol, Cambridge,

Doncaster, Dublin Library and Dublin Philidorean, Edinburgh, Exeter,

Greenwich, Hambro' [where was that?], London, Manchester, Newcastle,

Norwich, Nottingham, Pentonville, Taunton, Yarmouth, and York; also St

Petersburg, Circle des Panoramas (Paris), and Caf de la Regence (Paris).

Manuscripts, such as minute books, also provide valuable evidence.

Sometimes these were compiled by a club secretary subsequent to the time of

a club's formation, but they are still very useful nonetheless. The London

Chess Club which was founded in 1807 and expired in 1870 but some

documents can be seen in the London Metropolitan Archive; these were

probably compiled by George Perigal between 1830 and 1850. Also many of

the letters London sent to Edinburgh during their correspondence match of

1824-8 survive. At one time Edinburgh was said to have a full set of these but

when I visited in 2007 it was clear that several had gone missing over the

years.

A third type of evidence about early clubs consists of the various directories

that were compiled at various times in the nineteenth century. In some years,

first in 1856, the covers of The Chess Player's Chronicle had lists of clubs

with addresses, names of secretaries and other details. Unfortunately, when

volumes were bound, the binders often discarded the covers and these are lost,

and reprints of those magazines generally lack these lists, but some original

copies survive with this information.

The first person to compile a club directory was W. R. Bland of Derby in

1880, although it omits Scottish and Irish clubs, and he compiled a second

edition in 1882. After a gap of some years, Frideswide and Thomas Rowland

carried on this work for a while. It is noticeable that in many cases, clubs told

Bland a year of foundation that was later than the earliest year known from

the Chronicle lists or other sources, thus indicating discontinuity or at least a

loss of records and lack of surviving members from earlier times.

Secondary source evidence for early clubs also exists in the form of clubswriting their own histories, either as books or, more common nowadays, as

websites. In some cases the authors of these rediscover and include earlier

records, as was the case with the work edited by Adrian Thorpe, The Bury and

West Suffolk Chess Club 1867-1997, which incorporates the 'Proceedings of

the Bury and West Suffolk Chess Club 1867-83'. There is a real need now for

somebody to compile a bibliography/web-ography of all the different club

histories and history websites that are available, and then as a second step to

start putting all this information into a database. The Ken Whyld Association

has already published a bibliography of the centenary books of numerous

German chess clubs but I doubt if this has been done for other countries.

The oldest clubs: some questions and answers

In this section I deal with some of the points raised in the English Chess

Forum thread and make reference to an outstanding recent discovery (not by


4/12

me) that was revealed there. As one contributor wrote, Bill Wall has put a

potted history of early chess clubs and chess cafes online. In my opinion,

some of this is accurate but the lack of sources makes it of little value. As

usual with Wall, there are some glaring errors and even contradictions within

the document itself. For example, he has confused the old London Chess Club

(founded 1807) with William Lewis's chess rooms in St. Martin's Lane.

There are occasional references to British chess clubs in the eighteenth

century but none of them lasted. With both France and England, the word

"club" may be a misnomer; we are usually talking about groups who met in

coffee houses but did not form a body with a constitution and membership

fee. The best-known, and perhaps only genuine, English eighteenth century

chess club was Parsloe's in St. James's, London, which was established in

1774 to cater for Philidor's visits to England.

New York had a club in 1802 that did not last. In 1810 the Brazen Nose Chess

Club in Oxford had eight members but expired in 1811.

The oldest still-existing chess club, perhaps surprisingly, is in a landlocked

city: Zrich, in Switzerland, founded in 1809 and still going strong. Swiss IM,

Dr. Richard Forster, author of the mammoth biography of Amos Burn, has

researched and written its history, published already in German. An English

version of his book, The Zurich Chess Club 1809-2009, is due to be published

by McFarland later this year, and I may write on the subject of chess clubs

again next year after I have had the opportunity of reading that work.

Since writing my thesis, I found evidence of an early chess club in Ipswich,

but it was probably not long-lived. The Ipswich Journal of 9 October 1813

reported: 'We are enabled to inform our readers, that a Chess Club is recently

established in this town, which is held at the Waggon and Horses Inn once a

fortnight, and which having for its object the extension of the knowledge of

that pleasing and scientific game, is calculated to afford considerable pleasure

to the amateurs of that amusement.'

When one tries to determine what is the oldest chess club in England it isimpossible to avoid arguments over definitions and proof of continuity. In

many cases where a club is very old, or has the same name as a very early

club, it may be no simple matter to decide whether this really counts as the

same club or not.

To deal with Bristol first, two contributors to the Forum raised points about it.

As Benjamin Keen of London Chess Club gave a simultaneous display

against two opponents in Bristol, reported in Bell's Life in London on 20

August 1826, this may suggest that the nucleus of a club was forming. Elijah

Williams was involved in the city's first formal club in 1829 which continued

into the 1840s, but whether there was unbroken continuity is less clear. In

1843, Bell's Life in London reported that Williams was now organising a club

in Bristol 'which promises to be permanent', with thirty to forty members


5/12

meeting at Guildhall coffee house on Thursday evenings. Bristol is the only

city to have two different books commemorating different phases of its

nineteenth century chess development. These are

a) Elijah Williams (ed.), Souvenir of the Bristol Chess Club; containing

one hundred original games of chess, recently played, either between

the best players in that society, or by them with other celebrated players

of the day, with copious notes (London 1845).b) John Burt, The Bristol Chess Club its History, Chief Players and

23 Years' Record of Principal Events; 151 games by 64 past and present

members etc. (Bristol 1883).

Elijah Williams was a key figure in the early years until he moved to London

during the 1840s and was their main player in the postal match against

Staunton (1839-40). In 1846 the Bristol club transferred to the Athenaeum.

After Williams moved to London, the club decayed until it was reconstituted

in 1859 as the Bristol Athenaeum Chess Club. In 1871, they had to leave the

Athenaeum and became the Bristol & Clifton Chess Association, probably

only the second chess club in Victorian England to admit women as members,

notably Mary Rudge who joined when she moved to Clifton in 1874. There is

good evidence that Bath was the first club to admit women, a few years earlier.

Apart from the main club already mentioned, there were also unconnected

clubs at some periods. In the 1860s there was a St. James's Club of Bristol

(possibly connected with the St. James' Club of London) and around 1887

there was the City Chess and Draughts Club, which played a postal match

against Bath. Their players were Burt, Blacklock, Davis, Gilbert, Harries, andT. G. Wright. It appears that John Burt, who had written the history of the

Bristol & Clifton club then fell out with them and resigned, I am still not sure

why. He must have then joined or formed this rival club, but died in April

1888. Perhaps some reader from Bristol can throw light on this?

One contributor to the thread asked: "I read somewhere that Liverpool CC

was the oldest continually existing club in the world. Not sure if they are still

going though." Yes, they are still going, so far as I am aware, but, as noted

above, Zurich is older. So are others and it is certainly not even the oldest clubin the United Kingdom.

Christopher Kreuzer and Ray Collett mentioned early clubs in Scotland on the

Forum. Edinburgh Chess Club, which I have visited twice, is undeniably the

oldest. It has history pages posted at its website. Despite a reorganisation in

1852 (when they merged with another club in the city, Staunton attending) the

continuity of records makes it undeniable that this is the same club from the

start. (Moreover Edinburgh have kept the present premises since acquiring

them in the 1890s.)

The earliest club in Dundee apparently dates from 1829. Though there was

briefly an earlier club in nearby Montrose, who wrote a letter to the

Edinburgh club, preserved in its archive. The complicated early history of


6/12

clubs in Dundee can be found in: Peter W. Walsh, The Story of Dundee Chess

Club: its personalities and games (Dundee 1984). That Montrose club was

possibly an ancestor of the Angus club mentioned by Walsh?

Forster examined some of the records of Liverpool Chess Club for his huge

biography of Amos Burn, who was a long-time member and some-time

President of it. Unfortunately, the records do not yet seem to be placed in apublic archive to ensure their preservation and to make them available for any

historian to go and study them. One website, mentioned in the thread, has

posted extracts from J. S. Edgar's history: Liverpool Chess Club. A short

sketch of the club from its first meeting, 12th December 1837, to the present

time (Liverpool 1893). This is a book of some interest, but the compiler

evidently had no idea about Liverpool clubs prior to 1837.

I do not agree with suggestions on the Forum that the brief Liverpool Mercury

chess column, which ran from 9 July 1813 until about 20 August 1814,

indicates a local chess club existed then, though I concur with Geoff Chandler

saying it "does show Chess was of interest in Liverpool." If there had been a

club, it would probably have been stated explicitly. The column was a private

initiative of the proprietor and editor Egerton Smith, who later ran another

chess column in The Kaleidoscope at various times during the 1820s. From

reports in The Kaleidoscope and various references to chess in the Liverpool

Mercury during the 1820s, it seems that various attempts to found chess clubs

were made but they did not last long. Political factionalism in the city may

have been part of the problem; Smith was closely identified with the

Concentric Society and other liberal movements. However, the evidence issometimes a bit contradictory. When Leeds and Liverpool played their

correspondence match in 1825, somebody from Liverpool wrote to the papers

to say that this match was nothing to do with the members of the Liverpool

chess club. (See, for example, Bell's Life of 30 October 1825, citing an

unidentified Liverpool paper.) At various dates attempts were made in the

press to re-found a club in Liverpool. One was in the Liverpool Mercury on 8

October 1830.

As Mick Norris pointed out on the Forum, a Manchester Chess Club wasfounded on 3 September 1817. Its original laws are interesting and contain the

following statement: "When one has nothing else to play, and his king being

out of check, cannot stir without coming to a check, then the game is stalemate.

In England he whose king is stale-mate wins the game but in France,

and several other countries, the stale-mate is a drawn game." It took about

twenty years to finally eradicate the idea in some clubs that you could lose by

stalemating your opponent. In 1990, an interesting history Chess and

Manchester was compiled by Eric Nowell and Alan Smith, which gives most

of the details about early clubs in the city. There is also some of this

information online. I also found further facts through my research into old

newspapers.

The original Manchester Club perhaps sometimes had a rather tenuous


7/12

existence. In 1835, the Nottingham player Perrier moved to Manchester and

could not find a club. Thanks partly to his efforts, Bell's Life was able to

report a few months later that the revived club had twenty members and

hoped soon to double that. In October 1836 there were two clubs in

Manchester, but by 1838 their existence was in doubt. In October 1839

Walker said there was no regular club and a reader should enquire of a hatter

called Kovis in Market-street who might know of players. Just about thattime, a new club started in the Manchester Athenaeum, which opened in 1839.

From about 1846, chess was reviving in the city. In 1853 the two clubs

merged. Later they seem to have separated again and the old Manchester

Chess Club formally went out of existence and its property sold in December

1876, although a resurrection soon followed.

At the University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, there is

a book referenced as "Records of Nottingham Chess Club 1842-1900:

MS/675." The first entries in this book, which goes up to 1898, are dated lists

of people attending meetings in May 1842. Also pasted in is a tiny greencovered

booklet, printed in 1858 and entitled 'Rules of the Nottingham Chess

Club, held at Bromley House, founded October 16 1829.' I am not in a

position to say whether any present chess club in Nottingham is the direct

successor of the old Bromley House club, but if so that makes it a strong

candidate for England's oldest club with a continuous existence, pre-dating

Norwich by a few years. Bell's Life reported on a Nottingham chess club ball

in 1839, with several hundred visitors at the Exchange Assembly Rooms:

'Such a galaxy of beauty never looked before on chess boards.'

On the Forum, it was Warren Kingston who mentioned the Norwich Chess

Club website. This is a series of pages compiled by Owen Hindle, mostly

about visits of masters to the club. It mentions the book by P. H. Bannock,

History of the Norfolk & Norwich Chess Club: 1836-1936 (Norwich 1936),

although Bell's Life actually mentions Norwich Chess Club in 1835. Yet in

1840 when the paper mentioned a correspondence match between nearby

Yarmouth and Lynn, it said: 'In Norwich chess appears to be at a low ebb. We

hear of no regular club.' It is perhaps too much to expect most clubs to be able

to produce proof of continuous existence from such an early date to thepresent.

Bannock's book shows that the Norwich club revived around 1850, and,

following a split, it re-formed under its present name, the Norwich and

Norfolk Chess Club, in 1856. The most prominent early members after that

(from the 1860s) were Frederick Rainger (leader of the successful split) and

later John Odin Howard Taylor. In later years, the chess writer John Keeble

was a prominent member.

As for Leeds, Bell's Life reported on 13 May 1838 on the dinner held at the

end of the first year of the revived club:

'Mr Muff, the Chairman, went into a short retrospective statement,

not only of the transactions of the session just closed, but also gave the


8/12

meeting the history of the two former Chess Clubs in Leeds, each of

which lasted only a few years. At that period, however, the number of

Chess players in this neighbourhood was but limited, and there was little

of that enthusiasm in favour of this truly scientific game which exists at

the present day.'

Jon D'Souza-Eva mentioned "the wonderfully named Dublin PhilidoreanSociety." This was Ireland's first well-documented chess club, founded in

Dublin in July 1819, taking its name from the eighteenth century chess master

Philidor, and meeting at the Harp Coffee House. Its precursor, from 1813, was

(according to an article on Irish chess in Staunton's magazine) 'more a friendly

society than a Club, the members not having any regular Club-room, but

meeting for practice weekly at each other's houses.' The change probably

came when a young Trinity College Dublin egyptologist, Edward Hincks

resigned his fellowship to become a country Rector. In September 1828, as

mentioned in The Kaleidoscope, the Philidorean challenged the Edinburgh

Chess Club to a correspondence match but the Scots rested on their laurels.

In the 1830s a new chess club was formed in the Dublin Library and

ultimately these two clubs coalesced during the 1840s. Further foundations

and mergers followed the Irish Famine until 1865 when the Dublin Chess

Club organised the first Irish chess congress at the Dublin Athenaeum, in

which Steinitz participated. The collapse of the Athenaeum left the city with

only the rump of an old club at the Library, until 1867 when the City and

County of Dublin Chess Club (later renamed Dublin Chess Club) was

founded. I am not sure about the history of Belfast clubs but Dublin ChessClub is almost certainly the oldest Irish club and many of its records survive.

Posters to the Forum also mentioned two clubs of which I was a member at

various times. The Worcester City Chess Club was re-founded in 1837; its

web page includes information from A History of Worcester City Chess Club

by Ray Collett and Tom Widdows (1987). Paul McKeown posted on the

Forum a lot of information that was new to me about the Athenaeum Chess

Club in London, of which I was team captain in its centenary year when we

won the National Club Championship. He says that the Chess Club's full styleis the "Camden Athenaeum, Westminster and Central Chess Club," following

two mergers." McKeown found that the Camden Athenaeum opened in 1871,

and the Athenaeum Chess Club started there two years later in 1873.

John Upham provided a weblink for the Huddersfield Chess Club, which he

thought was founded in 1852. John Townsend was able to point out that in

1844 Huddersfield had the distinction of hosting the annual meeting of the

Yorkshire Chess Association at the George Hotel and the report in the Chess

Player's Chronicle shows the town already had a chess club then. In fact, very

early in the Chess Player's Chronicle (1841), Staunton acknowledges

receiving lists of members belonging to clubs in the following cities and

towns: Paris, Berlin, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Portsmouth, Lynn,

Halifax, Maldon, Sheffield, Wakefield, Huddersfield, and Hull.


9/12

Now to that major discovery: Ray Collett opened the Forum thread by

drawing attention to this. Thanks to the art-history sleuthing of Streatham &

Brixton Club members, Hereford Chess Club has recently put in a bid to be

recognised as the oldest provincial English club (though without a continuous

history). Its early existence is proved by a tremendous piece of physical

evidence but actually I do not believe that any connection to later clubs in thetown is likely to be proved. When I was researching a conference paper on

early clubs up to 1850 (mostly existing in the 1840s), I came across no

references to one in Hereford. The story has been revealed over a period of

months on the club blog.

To summarise, Richard Tillett of Streatham & Brixton found in a junk shop

an old book called An Illustrated History of Interior Design by Mario Praz

(Thames & Hudson 1964, reprinted 1982). It included some pictures of people

playing chess, the caption to one of which said T. Leeming, The Chess Club

of Hereford (early 19th century) in a collection in Florence. With other

Streatham members, he went on the hunt. The Streatham sleuths subsequently

discovered that Thomas Leeming painted at least two versions of the picture,

including himself in the composition. They think he was born about 1788 and

found that by 1814 he was regularly visiting Hereford where he met his wife.

Hereford Chess Club now claims to have been founded in 1812 .

The curator of the Hereford Museum and Art gallery shows the Streatham

sleuths a copy of the inscription that was originally on the back of their copy

of the painting, naming the seven members of the club (including Leeming) in1815 and it also said "Club Establish'd Nov. 29 1812." This is truly a

remarkable discovery by the Streatham men and full marks for their persistent

research.

The Streatham blog says: "The existence of a provincial club at such an early

date may promote chess historians to rethink the spread of organised chess

outside London." Indeed it does at least modify the accepted view that port

cities were the main ones to have clubs initially.

Some games played by early chess clubs

Prior to the 1880s, except in London where club teams could more easily

meet at evenings, much of the competition between clubs was by

correspondence, which is where I first came in. My approach was that before

once can really see what the inter-club postal matches were about, it was

necessary to find out something about the clubs themselves.

The following is summarised from my History of Correspondence Chess in

Britain and Ireland. It included these game fragments, although they were not

played by post, because the match between the Yorkshire clubs of Doncaster

and Wakefield in 1838 appears to have been the first inter-club match over the

board. The games were played by consultation; team matches with individual

opponents developed later.


10/12

The two sides traveled to a neutral venue, Kempsall, to play over two days,

with the representatives of each club in separate rooms. A friendly dinner was

enjoyed in between. The early moves of both games were published in Bell's

Life in London on 9 September 1838, with light notes by George Walker.

Wakefield DoncasterFirst consultation match game, Kempsall, 1838

French Defense [C00]

1 e4 e6 2 f4 d5 3 e5 c5 4 Nf3 Nc6 5 c3 Bd7 6 Bd3 Qb6 7 Bc2 Nh6 8 d4

This move appears to be premature and opens the game too much.

8...cxd4 9 cxd4 Bb4+

A weak check. The knight advanced to the same square were better.

10 Nc3 f6 11 00 00 12 Kh1 fxe5 13 fxe5 Nf5 14 a3 Be7 15 Na4 Qc7 16

Bxf5 Rxf5 17 Nc3 Qb6 18 b4

18...Nxd4??

Well-intentioned, but "good intentions; are not enough at Chess. Doncaster

overlooks the simple counter move of pinning the Knight."

19 Be3 Qd8 20 Qxd4 (10)

The game becomes devoid of interest, Wakefield having won a piece for a

pawn. Doncaster fought it out, however, to fifty-five moves before they were

compelled to resign.

Doncaster WakefieldSecond consultation match game, Kempsall, 1838

Bishop's Opening [C23]

1 e4 e5 2 Bc4 Bc5 3 c3 Qg5 4 Qf3 Qg6 5 Ne2 d6 6 h3 Nf6 7 d3 Be6 8 Bb3

c6 9 Be3 Bb6 10 Nd2 Na6 11 Nc4 Bc7 12 00 d5 13 Nd2 00 14 Ng3 Rad8

15 Qe2 Bb6 16 Nf3 Nd7 17 Nh4 Qf6 18 Nhf5 Bxf5 19 Nxf5 Kh8 20 Qg4 h6

21 exd5 cxd5 22 Bxd5 Ndc5 23 Bxc5 Nxc5 24 Qf3 Rxd5 25 Qxd5 Qxf5 26

d4 Rd8 27 Qxe5 Qxe5 28 dxe5 Nd3 29 Rad1 Nxe5 30 Rxd8+ Bxd8 ()

Walker wrote that although Wakefield looked like winning, "Doncaster,

however, managed to draw the game by some skilful play. The contest was

carried to upwards of one hundred moves, second Queens being introduced,

and many ingenious stratagems attempted on both sides."

To illustrate early correspondence matches between clubs here is a game

which was considered for inclusion in my history but did not make the final

cut. The late Professor Pagni, who published various collections of

correspondence games, found the other game of this match but not this one,

although both were first printed in the same issue of the Illustrated London

News, 24 April 1858, with a few notes by Staunton.

It is likely that the match was arranged by George William Lyttelton, who had


11/12

been a brilliant classics scholar at Cambridge and might have become an

academic had his father, the third Baron, not suddenly died, obliging him to

take over the Hagley estate (very near Stourbridge) and family

responsibilities. Cambridge, unsurprisingly, won this match 20 against the

small Worcestershire club, but it could have been 11 had the latter not been

so sporting. The gentlemanly decision (see note to move eleven) was probably

suggested by Lyttelton.

Cambridge University Stourbridge

Correspondence match, 1858

Ruy Lopez [C64]

1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 Bc5 4 c3 Qf6 5 00 Nge7 6 d4 exd4 7 Bxc6

The Kt was taken for the sake of getting out of the 'bookwork' as soon as

possible.

7...dxc6

The best move.

8 cxd4 Bb6 9 Bg5 Qe6 10 Nc3 00 11 h3

This move was made under a misapprehension. When the committee met to

decide upon this play, they inadvertently, in setting up the men, placed

Black's Queen at Q 3rd, instead of K 3rd. The mistake was not discovered till

several moves had been played on both sides, when Stourbridge, rather than

spoil the game, very generously allowed the moves up to the eleventh to be

retracted

11...h6 12 Bh4 Ng6 13 Bg3 f5 14 e5 Rd8 15 Re1 Ba515...Qf7 would have hampered White terribly.

16 Qa4 Bxc3 17 bxc3 Kh7? 18 c4 b6 19 Rad1 Bb7 20 d5 cxd5 21 Nd4 Qe8

22 Qxe8 Rxe8 23 Nxf5 Rad8 24 e6 c6?

24...dxc4.

25 Bc7 Ra8 26 f4 Rec8 27 cxd5 cxd5 28 Rc1 Re8?

28...d4 29 Nxd4 'as any attempt to win the exchange would have cost them

dear'.

29 Nd6 Re7 30 Nxb7 Rc8 31 f5 Nh4 32 Nd6 Rf8 33 Re5 d4 34 Rc4 g6

34...g5 35 Bd8.35 f6 Rxf6 36 Bd8 Rfxe6 37 Bxe7 Rxe5 38 Bxh4 (10) and in a few more

moves Black resigned.

Finally, here is a game played by Benjamin Keen at Bristol on 15 August

1826.

Benjamin Keen Riddle

Muzio Gambit [C37]

Bell's Life in London reported:

On Tuesday last the Philidorian Match was played at Bristol, by Mr Keen, of

the Middle Temple, against Mr Riddle and Mr Jaikes, of the city of Bristol.

Mr Keen played two games at the same time, giving the further advantage of

the pawn and move in the game which he played seeing the pieces. He won


12/12

both games. The following were the principal moves made in the game played

without seeing the board.

1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Nf3 g5 4 Bc4 g4 5 00 gxf3 6 Qxf3 Bc5+ 7 d4 Bxd4+ 8

Kh1 Be5 9 Bxf4 Qf6 10 Bxe5 Qxf3 11 Rxf3 f6 12 Bxc7 Nc6 13 Nc3 Nd4 14

Rf2 Ne6 15 Bg3 d6 16 Bxd6 Bd7

17 e5 fxe5 18 Bxe6 Bxe6 19 Rf8+ Kd7 20 Rxa8 Kxd6 21 Rd1+ Ke7 22Rdd8 a6 23 b3 h5 24 Ne4 Bf5 25 Re8+ Kf7 26 Nd6+ and wins. (10)

Postscript

My book The History of Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland 1824-

1987 is one of four titles shortlisted for the English Chess Federation's 2011

book of the year award. I have not seen the other three books yet but hope to

catch up with at least one of them later. If the publishers of those titles are

reading this, maybe they would like to put a review copy in the post, please?

==== ====

If You Want to Improve Chess Check this out:

www.ajedrezdesdematamoros.blogspot.com

==== ====
http://www.ajedrezdesdematamoros.blogspot.com/http://www.ajedrezdesdematamoros.blogspot.com/

oldest chess clubs

Documents