Tele Chess

[Andy Stoker]

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Was having a match by telephone a last resort or adherence to a trend back then? Was it actually perceived as the way forwards at some point? I can't quite work out what brought it about.
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I think simply savings on time and cost. Had we had to play Methodist College Belfast in person, I expect it would have taken two days with an overnight stop, travel costs and required an accompanying teacher (in those days, we sent teams of school children all over Birmingham without any teacher ... I remember on at least one occasion, having to go through the city centre and mis-remembering the bus I was supposed to take out the other side).
As it was, we played the match in a (long) afternoon - well supervised at both ends.

[Roger de Coverly]

Was having a match by telephone a last resort or adherence to a trend back then? Was it actually perceived as the way forwards at some point? I can't quite work out what brought it about.

It would usually have been to avoid having to travel long or longish distances. In the UK, they were used for National Club, Sunday Times Schools and sometimes national stage county matches.

Once mobile phones became commonplace, they should have become easier to organise with a quicker rate of move transmission, but they had more or less died out by then. They don't mix well with time scrambles and even less so with quickplay finishes. The gradual elimination of the adjudication concept would have been another reason to avoid then. The spread of motorways and high speed trains could make neutral venues more feasible.

During the lockdown, they came back in the form of hybrid matches. That's where teams play over the internet but with physical arbiter supervision.

[MJMcCready]

It sounds like it began as something that embraced technology and was seen as a way forwards but it wasn't long before people realized it was a bad idea for a number of reasons, and that chess really wasn't suited to such a thing, hence the reason people ditched it. That's what it sound like.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Better technologies overtook it basically.

[NickFaulks]

Better technologies overtook it basically.

Which duly failed.

[MJMcCready]

Better technologies overtook it basically.

What overtook it?

[Mike Gunn]

There was thread on here 3 years ago (during the Covid Chess Closedown) proposing hybrid club matches (each club plays at their own venue). During this discussion the problems with BCF National Club telephone matches were recounted, particularly the infamous Maidstone vs Dundee encounter of 1994. See viewtopic.php?f=25&t=10922.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Infamous Maidstone vs Dundee encounter of 1994. SCCU's viewpoint (from bulletin of May 1994):

Maidstone are up in arms about their loss on board count in the Open. The match was played by telephone. The Dundee arbiter turned up three-quarters of an hour late but would not accept more than 15 minutes on the Dundee clocks "because it was my fault, not theirs". Then Dundee, it is alleged, were ludicrously inefficient in their transmission of moves. Mistakes abounded, and on occasion were not discovered until long afterwards. One occurred when the Maidstone player was very short of time. The Maidstone team became more and more angry as their games were turned into nonsenses by the Dundee officials. Or official; transmission was so slow that Maidstone suspected one person was doing the job single-handed. A Maidstone player, on one occasion, thought his opponent's move was so long in coming that he asked for confirmation that he really hadn't moved yet. Reply: "No, he's still thinking about it." Then some time later: "Oh, sorry, we seem to have lost your last move. Could you give it us again?"' - Some of the Maidstone players were for calling a halt to it (and claiming, presumably, a win on the ground of Dundee's incompetence). One, at least, got so frustrated and/or distracted that he forgot to play an intended move and lost a probably won game. Maidstone later complained to the Controller, Who expressed sympathy but did not see what lie could do. Neither does the Bulletin, and neither, we think, do Maidstone.

With hindsight, those who wanted to call a halt were probably right.

It is at best ironic that Dundee, drawn away, had insisted on their right to a telephone match despite Maidstone's offer of a half-way venue.

Apart from the issue of such goings-on in the later stages of a prestigious competition, Maidstone point to the large sums of money involved. How much? Don't know, to tell the truth, but the semi-finalists all get something, and first prize is £1000. And it mattered to Maidstone because they are committed to next year's European Club Cup and were rather counting on something from the National Club. We have heard that a London club was similarly embarrassed, and angry, after getting knockëd out last year in a very similar telephone match by.. Dundee & Victoria.

We must emphasise - as if it wasn't obvious - that our information comes firom Maidstone sources. We have not asked Dundee for their version.

Question on telephone matches: Player A takes a draw, confident that team mate B is winning. Then it turns out that B, through a mistake in transmission, has been playing an imaginary game for the last half hour and has to go back to a position .where he isn't winning at all. The mistake was the other side's. Is A allowed to go back to the position where he took a draw and reconsider? Well, why not? And what if you can't tell whose mistake it was? Perhaps the real answer is, telephone matches oughtn't to occur in serious competition.

[MJMcCready]

Oh boy, that is bad.

[Kevin Thurlow]

Now I'm back home...

"An article in British Chess Magazine in 1975 reported that on 9th April 1845, chess was played over an electric telegraph line between London and Gosport, play ending after seven hours, ‘perhaps because the Post Office clerk wanted to get home’. This drew a mild rebuke from EC Baker, who commented that the Post Office did not become responsible for telegraphs until 1870, and that the Admiralty had paid for the line and managed it up until then."

EC Baker was heavily involved in Civil Service and Post Office chess.