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

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Roger de Coverly
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Re: The UK Record for number of players in a multi-board team match?

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed May 19, 2021 1:17 pm

John Saunders wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 1:10 pm
My first memories of earlier 1960s large-scale events were of relatively heavy non-folding wooden boards being the norm.
Folding cardboard was common surely. The adverts in Chess or BCM are a reference for what was "normal" equipment.

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

Post by John Saunders » Wed May 19, 2021 2:25 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 1:17 pm
John Saunders wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 1:10 pm
My first memories of earlier 1960s large-scale events were of relatively heavy non-folding wooden boards being the norm.
Folding cardboard was common surely. The adverts in Chess or BCM are a reference for what was "normal" equipment.
Yes, true, but I don't remember folding cardboard being the norm for congresses or major county match gatherings in London in the mid to late 1960s - sturdy wooden boards with raised wooden surrounds was the order of the day. Folding cardboard was more for small gatherings in clubs and home use. And the boards in the 1927 photos don't look like folding cardboard.

At Mitcham we were still using age-old wooden boards to the bitter end in 1999 when the club closed down. Amongst out plastic sets, we even had (and still used) a few hideous old wooden sets with knights heads that had to be glued back on periodically. When the club closed down and we divided up the kit, I claimed an ancient board, a box of badly assorted wooden pieces and a barely functioning MOM clock out of sheer nostalgia for the seedy milieu of late 1960s chess! I still have them.
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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: The UK Record for number of players in a multi-board team match?

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Wed May 19, 2021 3:29 pm

Graham Borrowdale wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 8:35 am
Kevin Thurlow wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 8:18 am
Looking at the photographs, they weren't using clocks! Clocks were not made compulsory in the CS League until the late 70s...
That’s a sobering thought for those of us of a certain age. I was playing school chess in the 1970s, and I don’t think we used clocks on all boards (I had a game which went for adjudication at around move 20), but I would not have known that ‘adult’ leagues were not necessarily using clocks by then.
There was a club in the Lancaster league who were mostly clockless until the mid 1980s when they folded.

(strictly speaking their games should not have been graded, but in practice they very much were)
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Re: The UK Record for number of players in a multi-board team match?

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Wed May 19, 2021 4:50 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."

There was an event (I think also a fund-raiser?) during "National Chess Week", which was in the 50s, I think 1952, when Alexander did a simultaneous display which was televised(!). If only somebody would write a book on Civil Service Chess, information like this would be easily obtained.

Various other events were held and the Teenagers vs Old Stagers was (I think) held when convenient during the week. Results were sent in and a few weeks later, somebody had counted the results and produced a rough score. I think they included informal games, so parents could play children, teachers could play pupils etc. all over the country. Might be worth looking at BCM and Chess for 1952!

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

Post by Geoff Chandler » Wed May 19, 2021 5:08 pm

Hi Kevin,

I know it does not compare number wise but Scotland used to run these West of Scotland v East of Scotland matches.
The first one started in 1871! The largest number appears to be 91 on each side in 1894 when the East won 72½-68½.

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

Post by Tim Harding » Wed May 19, 2021 6:13 pm

Geoff Chandler wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 5:08 pm
Hi Kevin,

I know it does not compare number wise but Scotland used to run these West of Scotland v East of Scotland matches.
The first one started in 1871! The largest number appears to be 91 on each side in 1894 when the East won 72½-68½.
I think one of those early Scottish matches could have held the record at one time but the numbers for 1894 that you cite had already been surpassed.

A 106-a-side North versus South of England match was played at the Great Western Hotel, Birmingham, on 28 January 1893.
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Re: The UK Record for number of players in a multi-board team match?

Post by Geoff Chandler » Wed May 19, 2021 6:24 pm

Hi Tim,

I suspected there were larger teams, I'm sure I once saw the report of a really massive team even in an old chess.

I got my Scottish info from https://www.chessscotland.com/document ... atches.htm

The intriguing result there is 1896: "'No result'. East claimed a win, the West a draw."
Sounds like a debate over ½pt. No other details. I wonder what happened?

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

Post by Peter Hornsby » Wed May 19, 2021 8:28 pm

Thanks for the detailed replies, absolutely fascinating!

I wonder if such events will ever be slightly replicated or if they are relics of a by-gone era way of having team matches.

Online is does seem that 38 vs. 38 is the most, that I have found anyway, which is a bit surprising as it must be easier to get an 100 vs. 100 match online rather than in person these days.
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Re: The UK Record for number of players in a multi-board team match?

Post by David Sedgwick » Wed May 19, 2021 10:18 pm

Peter Hornsby wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 8:28 pm
Online is does seem that 38 vs. 38 is the most, that I have found anyway, which is a bit surprising as it must be easier to get an 100 vs. 100 match online rather than in person these days.
The ECF North v South Online Match on 5th September 2020 was played over 108 boards.

https://englishchessonline.org.uk/ecf-n ... ch-report/

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

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Wed May 19, 2021 10:18 pm

"Online is does seem that 38 vs. 38 is the most, that I have found anyway, which is a bit surprising as it must be easier to get an 100 vs. 100 match online rather than in person these days."

Are you volunteering to organize one?!

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

Post by Nick Grey » Wed May 19, 2021 11:26 pm

The North v South OF Thames OTB match I played in was more than 500 boards. Was 'at Barbican.

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

Post by John Clarke » Wed May 19, 2021 11:32 pm

Kevin Thurlow wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 9:16 am
On the lack of clocks, I think the players tended to just get on with it. The deliberately slow play to try and draw on adjudication was not common-place then, although it did happen.
Clockless games could sometimes be an opportunity for the unscrupulous. As a boy in the sixties, I heard one story about a match in the national schools' knockout event (usually called the "Sunday Times", after its main sponsor). One of the teams was already advantaged because of the age-handicap, and proceeded to sew things up by playing hardly any moves in a couple of untimed games, which inevitably resulted in draws. We always made sure our own matches had clocks on every board.
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Re: The UK Record for number of players in a multi-board team match?

Post by Nick Grey » Wed May 19, 2021 11:44 pm

Pergamon; Chess & Bridge, Sutton Coldfield & London; First Edition (1 Jan. 1988) - only 38 issues so maybe late 87 early 88.

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

Post by Peter Hornsby » Thu May 20, 2021 7:51 am

Kevin Thurlow wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 10:18 pm
"Online is does seem that 38 vs. 38 is the most, that I have found anyway, which is a bit surprising as it must be easier to get an 100 vs. 100 match online rather than in person these days."

Are you volunteering to organize one?!
Would love to after the 2020 Season has finished: https://results.scorchapp.co.uk/t/2020chess/pairings/9

And thanks David I remember that now, thought 38 vs. 38 was a bit on the 'low' side!
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Mike Gunn
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Re: The UK Record for number of players in a multi-board team match?

Post by Mike Gunn » Thu May 20, 2021 11:08 am

Those boards in the Civil Service match won't be plastic as that type of plastic wasn't invented/ in general use in the 1920s. We used folding boards in school chess in the 1960s and we had enough clocks for an 8 board school chess match.

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