You're right and I have now found the Brown-Lewis game and added it to Britbase.Tim Harding wrote: You should be able to find also the Brown-Lewis game in the Yorkshire Post, I think of 20 August. Gerard Killoran, who has been researching the Brown brothers for the past year or so with me, found it there and maybe he will post it here later. Some Forum readers may have seen my articles about the Browns, initially at my site but later at the Chess Cafe where it's now only available to subscribers unfortunately. I shall probably do a final version of the article some time in the future.
The reason I missed it was because my British Newspaper archive search parameters were "Oxford chess". By using that I hoped to skip over any random chess references which didn't involve the Oxford tournament but I have checked it again and that search query misses the Yorkshire Post entry for 20 August 1910 even though that article does mention Oxford in the text. A simple search for "chess" finds it correctly. I was half-aware of this possible risk when I was going through the archive and had meant to go back and check the Yorkshire Post specifically because I was vaguely aware that I had not seen one issue whilst trawling through it in chronological order. I suppose this is a salutary lesson for anyone relying on online searches - they don't necessarily find everything they should, given that the OCR process is far from being 100% accurate. Keeping the search parameter as simple as possible is the safest bet. Of course, even just searching for "chess" won't necessarily find everything - there are bound to be relevant articles lurking on databases which we don't find because OCR hasn't even recorded this five-letter word right. (Has anyone else noticed how many Duchesses turn up in results when searching for the word 'chess' on databases?)
And, of course, that 20 August issue would have to be one of the more important ones! It also had a Major Open game I'd missed (Kerr-Waterman, Rd 5) and confirmation of the round number and date for Gunston-O'Hanlon.
I thought I saw it quoted as a 'Scotch Gambit' rather than 'Scotch Game'. But I will go and check that again.Tim Harding wrote:I am curious to know why in the game Blackburne-Blake you give White's fourth move as 4 c3 (not stating any source). The Manchester Guardian, 20 August, did say this game was a Scotch but I found no further moves and Blackburne very rarely played 4 c3.
I don't have access to either of these currently though I am aware of their importance. Is there online access to them? Until there is, like Blanche DuBois, I shall have to rely on the kindness of strangers...Tim Harding wrote:Among the non-digitised sources that I did examine were The Oxford Times (a column started specially just before the Congress) and The Field, which is really a must to check for these championships.
The Oxford Times did not have any games from the Championship other than those in your file posted today, though it does have a few games from lower classes. The forenames of F. S. Smith were nowhere stated that I could see, but on 22 October when Smith's games with Blackburne and Brown appeared, he was described as "champion player of Oxfordshire and Oxford City".
Very useful, thank you. I have added the extra games to the file.Tim Harding wrote:I have, I think, managed to reconstruct the finish of Paley Hughes v Blackburne from Hoffer's hints in The Field. It's in the book but I won't post it here as it remains speculative.
The Field did include one Championship game not yet in your file, and quite an interesting one. Here it is: