Playing Board One for County

[GrahamStuart]

Maybe this should be under the County Championship section?

I was collecting paperwork from Hampshire player Arthur Brameld and over a coffee we discussed County Chess board one appearances. Although I certainly don't have all the records (64 missing matches from 1990 to 2000 for example), I do have approx. 90% of them and our records are below. I have only included the A team, but this does include Chiltern League graded sections, when this was for the top team e.g. Under 200, 180 etc.

I wondered which player holds the record for all counties?

For Hampshire Joseph Blake pretty much played board one from 1887 to 1932 and scored a very impressive 73% from his 113 board one appearances.

Frank Elwell played behind Blake (and Alexander) almost 3 times as many times as the next player and a number of well known players are in both lists.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

This should be easy to do (in theory) for the big counties. I know the records exist for Middlesex, and I suspect Surrey and Kent and Essex as well.

What is the reason for the missing records for 1990 to 2000? Surely the BCF records or records of opposing counties would help? Or was the county playing at a lower level then, where records are patchier?

What strength were Blake and Elwell at their peak? You imply that a couple of times someone played board 1 above Blake and Elwell (but that Elwell always played below Blake), am I reading that right?

[GrahamStuart]

ECF rating Online results are from about 2000. Eventually I may be able to locate some of the missing ones. Not a quick and easy task. I have all the match results, but not the board results from this period. A lot of the older ones were either in SCCU Bulletin, WECU Westward Ho! and newspapers (from British Newspaper Archives). More effort will be undertaken as I go forward but I do have individual results from over 1000 matches (17700 individual results).

Blake played in the British Championship several times and lost a play-off to Atkins in 1909. https://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/pgn/19 ... iewer.html

Was probably 2400 - 2450 level at his peak.

Elwell was about 2300 - 2350 at his peak, but probably 2250 for the majority.

Sir George Thomas played above Blake once and CHOD Alexander played for Hampshire from the year after Blake stopped playing when he was a Professor at Winchester College. He played board one in all bar one of his games (when Thomas played on board one) and Elwell played behind Alexander.

Thomas mainly played for Hampshire at the start of his career and for the odd match when he was stronger.

[Ian Thompson]

The numbers and/or arithmetic in table doesn't appear to be correct for everyone - Mike Lambshire 5.5/11 = 55%.

[GrahamStuart]

The numbers and/or arithmetic in table doesn't appear to be correct for everyone - Mike Lambshire 5.5/11 = 55%.

Looks like an adjourned game which I don't have the final result for. As a quick and dirty extract I did not check all the details. Probably should have just added games played rather than include the results as this was the main reason for the post.

[MJMcCready]

This should be easy to do (in theory) for the big counties. I know the records exist for Middlesex, and I suspect Surrey and Kent and Essex as well.

What is the reason for the missing records for 1990 to 2000? Surely the BCF records or records of opposing counties would help? Or was the county playing at a lower level then, where records are patchier?

What strength were Blake and Elwell at their peak? You imply that a couple of times someone played board 1 above Blake and Elwell (but that Elwell always played below Blake), am I reading that right?

Hi there, where do the records exist for Middlesex please?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I had assumed Anthony Fulton would have records going that far back. He certainly had (has) complete player records from the start of his tenure as Senior Match Captain and maybe before. Not sure how far back it would be possible to go.

https://www.middlesexchess.com/history/legacy-website