English Chess Forum

John Saunders has begun the necessary and overdue task of assembling the games of H. E. Atkins.

http://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/pgn/atkins-viewer.html

So far he has 328 of them, but surely there must be many more out there. Here's one which might make the list. I wonder what happened to Georgie Hahn?


[Event "Simultaneous Exhibition"] [Site "Leicester YMCA"] [Date "1939.01.07"] [Round "?"] [White "Hahn, Georgie"] [Black "Atkins, Henry Ernest"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "C26"] [Opening "Vienna: Falkbeer variation"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. h3 d5 4. exd5 Nxd5 5. Nxd5 Qxd5 6. Nf3 Nc6 7. Qe2 Be6 8. Qb5 O-O-O 9. Qxd5 Bxd5 10. Bb5 Bxf3 11. gxf3 Nd4 12. Bd3 Nxf3+ 13. Kd1 g6 14. Be4 Nd4 15. c3 Ne6 16. d3 f5 17. Bg2 Rxd3+ 18. Kc2 Rd8 19. Re1 Bg7 20. Be3 a6 21. Rad1 Rxd1 22. Rxd1 Rd8 23. Rxd8+ Nxd8 24. Bg5 Ne6 25. Be3 e4 26. b4 Kd7 27. f3 f4 28. Bg1 e3 29. h4 Kd6 30. Bh3 Be5 31. Kd3 Ng7 32. Bf1 Nf5 {Leicester Daily Mercury - Monday 09 January 1939 p20} 0-1

I remember the Leicester Congress was named the "H E Atkins Memorial".
There must be residents of Leicestershire & its neighbouring counties with information, games, photographs etc.

328 is a considerable improvement over MegaBase 2020 which has 230.

I've attempted to add games and make corrections for ChessBase but I have failed miserably.

I have a tranche of Keith Richardson games from one of his scorebooks but CB are not interested.

Excellent newspaper clipping Gerard !

Did you obtain it from Newspapers.com or from some other source ?

John Upham wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:50 am

I have a tranche of Keith Richardson games from one of his scorebooks but CB are not interested.

Presumably, they're only interested in complete tournaments. So they'll willingly take all the games from the Outer Mongolia Under 5 Championship, but are not interested in the individual games of quite strong players.

John Upham wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:50 am

328 is a considerable improvement over MegaBase 2020 which has 230.

I've attempted to add games and make corrections for ChessBase but I have failed miserably.

I have a tranche of Keith Richardson games from one of his scorebooks but CB are not interested.

Excellent newspaper clipping Gerard !

Did you obtain it from Newspapers.com or from some other source ?

I got both the picture and the game from the British Newspaper Archive - now at 40 million pages and growing by the day.

Also good news about little Georgie Hahn. George Alfred Hahn was born in Vienna on 22 Dec 1921 and so was 17 years old in the photo. He escaped the Nazis and probably came here on the Kindertransport. He didn't spend much more time in Leicester as he would soon board a ship to the United States, arriving in New York on 24 Nov 1939. He became an American citizen and was drafted into the army, but happily survived the war. His died in New York on the 24th April 2007 at the age of 86, but doesn't seem to have played any more chess.

John Upham wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:50 am

I have a tranche of Keith Richardson games from one of his scorebooks but CB are not interested.

I would think John Saunders would be prepared to include them on Britbase. Given Keith's propensity for time trouble, I could imagine a number of the games are incomplete.

Roger de Coverly wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 14, 2021 11:04 am

John Upham wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:50 am

I have a tranche of Keith Richardson games from one of his scorebooks but CB are not interested.

I would think John Saunders would be prepared to include them on Britbase. Given Keith's propensity for time trouble, I could imagine a number of the games are incomplete.

The games are from the 1963 Niemeyer junior tournament which became the European Junior Championship.

The games were passed to JS some time ago.

Also, I passed a large tranche of materials to TDH for his correspondence database.

"Also good news about little Georgie Hahn."

I had noticed the junior winner was about 6 inches taller! I feared that the proximity to the war might have terminated Georgie's career (and indeed Georgie himself), so it was good to see he lived a long life.

My thanks to Gerard for opening up this thread, as well as providing considerable help with finding games and full forenames of Atkins' opponents.

The reason BritBase has significantly more Atkins game entries (n.b. about 35 of them are stubs or part-games) than ChessBase is almost entirely down to the good offices of Alan Smith, who sent me 50+ games, mainly from club and county chess, which he had culled from old newspapers and elsewhere, most of which hadn't been published digitally before. Many thanks to him, not just for collecting and submitting the games but for ironing out errors in previously-published Atkins material, including a few found in RN Coles' 1952 Pitman book of Atkins' games. (That's not a criticism of Coles's book, BTW - everything published inevitably has a few errors in it - and we are very lucky that technology now allows us to revisit primary sources so easily, but it's gratifying that so many people are taking the trouble to do this job properly.) Thanks are also due to Brian Denman and Andy Ansel who keep a close watch on activities at BritBase and nearly always contribute something useful to newly published files, as they have again with the Atkins file.

Ian Thompson is right that ChessBase prefer complete games of tournaments. (That said, I'm sure if someone sent them a handful of unknown games of, say, Capablanca, they'd take them like a shot.) Chessgames dot com, on the other hand, arranges games by player. I've read criticisms of that website on this forum in the past but I personally think they do a pretty good job, with a number of chess history enthusiasts working hard to collect games of old masters, as well as identify names and biographical details about players. I sourced 20 or so Atkins games from there.

BritBase policy is more in line with ChessBase in that most files are of specific tournaments but in recent years I've started to post significant collections of players' games where it seems appropriate or someone offers them to me. BritBase games usually find their way into Mega/Big Database when the annual update is published by ChessBase. I've no objection to ChessBase taking them, nor have I any objection to Chessgames dot com taking games for their website should they wish to have them.

Regarding John Upham's collection of Keith Richardson's 1963 Niemeyer games, I would suggest John offers them to Chessgames. The reason I haven't posted them on BritBase, as I believe I explained to John some time ago, is because they were played outside the British Isles and I don't post files of non-British (or non-Irish) tournaments. It's true that I do include games played overseas when I post a file of games by a given player, but I generally prefer to gather a significant collection of games before starting such a file. If John's objection to sending games to Chessgames is that they take a long time to post them, then I'll have to confess that I'm probably worse! It took me over a year to act on Alan Smith's first submission of Atkins games. This is not because I'm not working on BritBase but because I've been prioritising other items (e.g. old British Championships).

Perhaps this post will prompt a few suggestions for additional player files on BritBase. My answer will be along the lines of a famous presidential quotation: "ask not what BritBase can do for you - ask what you can do for BritBase."

The score for the following game becomes rather garbled after 12.d4.

Can any reader with access to The Field for 1915 provide the original, or can it be reconstructed?

[Event "NCCU Championship"] [Site "Leeds"] [Date "1915.03.27"] [Round "?"] [White "Atkins, Henry Ernest"] [Black "Waltuch, Victor Leonard"] [Result "1/2-1/2"] [ECO "C26"] [Opening "Vienna game"] [WhiteTeam "Yorkshire"] [BlackTeam "Lancashire"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. Bc4 Bb4 4. Nge2 c6 5. O-O d5 6. exd5 cxd5 7. Bb5+ Bd7 8. Bxd7+ Qxd7 9. d3 O-O 10. Bg5 Ne8 11. Bd2 f5 12. d4 {Shipley Times and Express - Friday 23 April 1915 p7} 1/2-1/2

I assume its something like this - later deleted to avoid confusion, as close but not right either - correct version below.

Another possibility might be...

...

(LATER EDIT: deleted as it turns out not to be right - close but no cigar!)

Yes, I think your solution is more likely as move 17 for black on the scoresheet says QR-K1 and not R-k1, which suggests there was a choice of rooks to move to K1 as in your line.

Here's another one where 38.B-B1 and 45... Q-K2 make no sense...

My solution:
[Event "Woodhouse Cup"] [Site "Leeds"] [Date "1912.11.02"] [Round "?"] [White "Atkins, Henry Ernest"] [Black "Yates, Fred Dewhirst"] [Result "1/2-1/2"] [ECO "D05"] [Opening "Queen's pawn game, Rubinstein (Colle-Zukertort) variation"] [WhiteTeam "Huddersfield"] [BlackTeam "Leeds"] 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. e3 e6 4. Bd3 c5 5. b3 Nc6 6. Bb2 Bd6 7. O-O Qe7 8. Ne5 O-O 9. Nd2 Nd7 10. f4 f5 11. g4 cxd4 12. exd4 Nb4 13. Be2 Nf6 14. g5 Ne4 15. Nxe4 dxe4 16. Nc4 Bxf4 17. Rxf4 Qxg5+ 18. Kh1 Qxf4 19. Ba3 b5 20. Bxb4 bxc4 21. Bxf8 Bb7 22. bxc4 Rxf8 23. Rb1 Ba8 24. d5 Rd8 25. Qd4 Qc7 26. Rg1 Kh8 27. Rg5 Qe7 28. h4 exd5 29. Rxf5 dxc4 30. Qc5 Qxh4+ 31. Kg1 Qe1+ 32. Bf1 Qg3+ 33. Bg2 Rd1+ 34. Rf1 Rxf1+ 35. Kxf1 Qf4+ 36. Ke2 Qg4+ 37. Ke1 Qh4+ 38. Ke2 h5 39. Bf1 Qg4+ 40. Ke1 Bb7 41. Be2 Qh4+ 42. Kd2 Qf4+ 43. Kd1 Qf7 44. Bxc4 Qd7+ 45. Kc1 Qe8 46. Qxa7 Bc8 47. Bf7 Qe5 48. Qa8 Qf4+ {Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette - Friday 27 December 1912 p4} 1/2-1/2

Roger Watson has kindly sent me what looks like the definitive version of Atkins-Wahltuch, 27.03.15, which he found in the Bradford Weekly Telegraph, 23 April 1915 (and which in turn sourced it from The Field)...

[Event "NCCU Championship"] [Site "Leeds"] [Date "1915.03.27"] [Round "1.1"] [White "Atkins, Henry Ernest"] [Black "Wahltuch, Victor Leonard"] [Result "1/2-1/2"] [ECO "C27"] [PlyCount "41"] [EventDate "1915.03.27"] [EventType "team-match"] [EventCountry "ENG"] [WhiteTeam "Yorkshire"] [BlackTeam "Lancashire"] [WhiteTeamCountry "ENG"] [BlackTeamCountry "ENG"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. Bc4 Bb4 4. Nge2 c6 5. O-O d5 6. exd5 cxd5 7. Bb5+ Bd7 8. Bxd7+ Qxd7 9. d3 O-O 10. Bg5 Ne8 11. Bd2 f5 12. d4 Bxc3 13. Bxc3 e4 14. Bd2 Nc6 15. f3 Nd6 16. b3 Rae8 17. Be3 h6 18. f4 Rc8 19. Qd2 Ne7 20. Rac1 Rc6 21. c3 { Sources: Shipley Times and Express, 23 April 1915 p7 (but with a garbled score) ; Bradford Weekly Telegraph, 23 April 1915 (taken from The Field, score as given here). Contributed by Gerard Killoran and Roger Watson.} 1/2-1/2