English Chess Forum

While acknowledging Somerset's pecuniary difficulties and passing round the cup, it is hard to see why they can't run to a chess table.

It may depend whose opinion you ask, Ian. To me the chess tables scheme is an excellent way to get many more people playing chess. To it should be added other initiatives to promote chess in schools, universities, libraries, cafés and pubs, etc. As things are, we as a nation simply don't play enough...

St. George's Chess Club. It was founded in 1840 as an immediate consequence of the demise of Howard Staunton's Westminster Chess Club. In 1851, it was host to the first international tournament.

It looks good if you live in Cumbria - not so hot if you're in Penzance.

Thanks to Paul and Gerard. Well done. Take your time! That looks like the famous Lasker - Capablanca encounter.

Have you any games which Bateman won?

Of course, the answer is Harry Bateman, as some of you have already indicated.

Try this one:

Which important international tournament consisted of an all-play-all preliminary stage, after which the first five played each other twice?

Well done, Christopher. As you - and now Paul! - have carefully avoided naming him, I think we'll let the problem run on for a while ...

Which player represented Cambridge University against Oxford early in the twentieth century, being Senior Wrangler and later a professor at Pasadena University, California?

Edward Winter discusses the problem in his feature article on Pillsbury and refers to a problem which was published shortly afterwards and may be the same one:

https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/ext ... ury1.html

Yes, well done, Jon.

Christopher, it wasn't Lasker, though I can see that, as a guess, it is not without merit. I doubt that they would be turning in their graves at the idea of it. Perhaps they would have liked to be invited. Mick, if I answer too many questions, the answer will become more easily searchable. So, for n...

In 1902, one of the world's top players contested a game in which the pieces were acted by real people. Who was the black queen?

Answer: Harrwitz v. Löwenthal, London, 1853. Charles Tomlinson remarked: "As the match inclined decidedly in favour of Löwenthal, one man said, in my hearing, that he had sent an organ boy to play before the window, so as to distract the attention of Löwenthal, who was known to be very nervous." (so...

No, sorry, Matt. Saint Amant v Staunton seems to have been quite gentlemanly compared with this match!

At which important nineteenth-century match is it recorded that a boy was sent to play music next to the window in order to distract one of the players?