The UK Record for number of players in a multi-board team match?

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: The UK Record for number of players in a multi-board team match?

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Thu May 20, 2021 12:49 pm

Identifying the material of the boards in the 1927 mega-match is an interesting question. As John has said, they don't appear to be solid wooden ones. They don't look like folding cardboard ones to me either, though I don't think I have ever seen one of those anyway (the ones I have seen have been the cardboard-encased in plastic variety). They look very smart and neat in the photos, indicating that they were probably mass-produced and printed in some way. Vinyl did become flexible in the mid-1920s, so it is not impossible that some plastic was involved (though unlikely).

I am struggling to think where you would find a definitive answer to the question, as this sort of detail is unlikely to have been recorded anywhere except maybe in the administrative/purchasing notes of the organisers. Do we know the details of the organisers?

Surely the boards would have been dispersed again afterwards, to local chess clubs? Maybe similar boards had been used in the recent international event (the first Olympiad)? Maybe photos of similar events will bring up similar looking boards, and/or looking at chess adverts of the period might help? Alternatively, someone present at any similar event that took place a few years later might remember (I don't think anyone old enough from the 1927 event would still be alive?).

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: The UK Record for number of players in a multi-board team match?

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Thu May 20, 2021 1:01 pm

John Saunders wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 1:10 pm
I had a further thought about a match that might have been even bigger - back in the fifties(?) I think there was a 'Teenagers vs Old Stagers' match, but I think it was held over several different venues, with the results being totted up nationwide to count as a single match. But maybe it doesn't count as it wasn't staged as one match in a single venue.
I found a reference to this in Chess Review, Volume 25 from 1957 (page 167):
Great Britain National Chess Week once again saw the Old Stagers trounce the Teenagers in a mass match by 740 to 482.
It doesn't explicitly say there that this was lots of mini-matches around the country, but the impression from other snippets available from internet searches does seem to indicate that this was the case, so, as John said, that would technically disqualify it from the record. Still impressive though.

EDIT: Searching on the score of the match (740 to 482) yields the reports in what I think are the April and May 1957 issues of British Chess Magazine (BCM), from the April issue a breakdown:
...mammoth Teenagers v. Old Stagers Match. The full score, as received on Saturday night, March 23rd, was Teenagers 482, Old Stagers 740. Large sections were held at Bristol (85 boards), Burnley (64), Northumberland (52), Southampton (50 and 110), Hayes (106), the National Chess Centre (111), Rotherham (79), Brighton (60), Lancaster (64), and Croydon (56). The 'Top Six Section', held in the Army & Navy Stores, London, S.W.1, ended in a 4-2 win for the Old Stagers. A full report of National Chess Week will be given in the May 'B.C.M.'.
Maybe the April and May BCMs can be perused by those with the 1950s issues, and maybe local press reported on the venues (interesting to see where the largest sections were held), and maybe the 'Top Six' game scores (and names of the players) were published?

(EDIT: The total boards for the 'major' venues listed above is 843. The overall score indicates a total of 1222 games (i.e. 2444 players - does that sound too much for 1957 or about right?), so the 'smaller' venues contributed 379 boards. If they were all less than 50 boards (say an average of 30 boards to be generous), then there would still have been at least 10-15 smaller venues, and probably a big tail of 'tiny' venues of 10-20 boards. So maybe as many as 30-40 smaller venues around the country to add to the 12 major ones given in the April BCM. Maybe a full listing was preserved/documented somewhere? The author of the BCM pieces appears to be summarising from a fuller report, so something of the sort may still exist.)