English Chess Forum

MartinCarpenter wrote:There seems to be rather thorough list of early Yorkshire matches on the Yorkshire chess history website: http://www.sjmann.supanet.com/Events/Event%20Index.htm

Don't think it threatens any of these records, but interesting in context.

Steve Mann gives this as the earliest representative match played in Yorkshire (or anywhere else?).

http://www.sjmann.supanet.com/Events/18 ... efield.htm
But I've found this one.
So can anyone beat Saturday 28th of October 1843?

From La Palamede 1836 (thanks to Jack for help with typing accents):

Il y a deux ans, un club d'échecs de Paris a proposé un défi à un club de Londres; le défi a été accepté, et l'une des parties, la première, a déjà été perdue par les Anglais; l'autre continue, et nous paraît belle. Le défi ne se compose que de deux parties. MM. Boncour, Saint-Amant, Alexandre et Chamouillet ont supérieurement conduit le jeu français.

A similar match was apparently proposed in 1821, but failed to come off.

ALT-0224: à
ALT-0225: á
ALT-0231: ç
ALT-0232: è
ALT-0233: é
ALT-0238: î
(All numbers using the number pad.)

Mike Truran wrote:From La Palamede 1836 (thanks to Jack for help with typing accents):

Il y a deux ans, un club d'échecs de Paris a proposé un défi à un club de Londres; le défi a été accepté, et l'une des parties, la première, a déjà été perdue par les Anglais; l'autre continue, et nous paraît belle. Le défi ne se compose que de deux parties. MM. Boncour, Saint-Amant, Alexandre et Chamouillet ont supérieurement conduit le jeu français.

A similar match was apparently proposed in 1821, but failed to come off.

This consisted of two games which were both conducted by correspondence in consultation. They were not OTB nor individual games which is what is being asked for.

Is that what's being asked for?

Even if that is what's being asked for, it still seems like quite an interesting piece of historical information.

There is a brief history of correspondence chess given here:

https://www.chess.com/article/view/corr ... ---a-histo

The author is Bill Wall so don't take it as 100% gospel.

Of course the most famous early correspondence match was London - Edinburgh 1824 after which The Scotch was named.

"Of course the most famous early correspondence match was London - Edinburgh 1824 after which The Scotch was named."

It was played by London - Did the English opening exist already?

Unless any matches between coffee houses in Philidors time in 1700a - e.g. Café de la Place du Palais-Royal near the Palais-Royal, Paris in 1681. By the 18th century it was known as the Café de la Régence, Kevin seems to have found the earliest.

There was a war going on with Napolean etc for a while.

More from wiki on Napoleon.

He was an innovator in using the financial, bureaucratic, and diplomatic resources of France. He could rapidly dictate a series of complex commands to his subordinates, keeping in mind where major units were expected to be at each future point, and like a chess master, "seeing" the best plays moves ahead.[208]

Gerard Killoran wrote:

Mike Truran wrote:From La Palamede 1836 (thanks to Jack for help with typing accents):

Il y a deux ans, un club d'échecs de Paris a proposé un défi à un club de Londres; le défi a été accepté, et l'une des parties, la première, a déjà été perdue par les Anglais; l'autre continue, et nous paraît belle. Le défi ne se compose que de deux parties. MM. Boncour, Saint-Amant, Alexandre et Chamouillet ont supérieurement conduit le jeu français.

A similar match was apparently proposed in 1821, but failed to come off.

This consisted of two games which were both conducted by correspondence in consultation. They were not OTB nor individual games which is what is being asked for.

This is a reference to the correspondence match between the Paris and Westminster Chess Clubs in 1834-1835.

There was no proposed match in 1821; it was 1823. See page 9 of my book Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland 1824-1987.
When the Edinburgh CC read in the press that the proposed Paris match was off, they challenged London early in 1824 and so the first international CC match came about.

I'm sure you're right. La Palamède is unclear on the matter - as written, it can easily be inferred that the challenge was issued in 1821, the same year as the "cercle de Philidor" was formed, but that need of course not necessarily have been the case.

The o.p. was not specific - just representative teams.

Any chance there were such matches in the 1700s.

Ian may have been fishing for help with the next days County U180 match Surrey v Middlesex when my advice to Ian would have been not play his usual system(s) or he was likely to get a draw.

Gerard Killoran wrote:There is a brief history of correspondence chess given here:

https://www.chess.com/article/view/corr ... ---a-histo

The author is Bill Wall so don't take it as 100% gospel.

About 25% gospel maybe? To expect an "historical" web page by Bill Wall to be accurate is a bit like expecting snow to fall in the Sahara.

That page has changed a bit since I first had occasion to critique it (elsewhere) but I note a few statements that are totally wrong. (Some are right while others are arguably not entirely wrong.) Basically I consider that when he gets something right it is by pure chance that he has happened upon a reliable source to plagiarise; of course he never cites his sources.

For example,

In 1942 the British held its first correspondence championship. It was won by R. Bonham,a blind player.

Bonham, who was indeed blind, did win the 1942/43 British CC Championship but it was not the first.
See my book cited in an earlier posting tonight for a list of champions from the start up to 2010.

In the 19th century chess master Joseph Blackburne was arrested as a spy for sending chess moves in the mail.

Totally false; this is an extremely garbled reference to an incident during the Baden-Baden 1870 tournament.
See my biography of Blackburne (who never played postal chess so far as I was able to discover, though at the start of his career he did enter a tournament that was cancelled).

The page also contains contradictions such as:

In 1884, the French magazine LA STRATEGIE organized an international chess tournament.

TRUE

In 1932 the first international correspondence tournament was held and won by Janos Balogh (1892-1980).

FALSE: there had been many international CC tournaments prior to 1932 including the one Wall mentioned earlier.

Here's another

In 1945, the International Correspondence Chess Assoication (ICCA) was formed

TRUE, apart from the spelling error, but just below we find:

In 1949 the International Correspondence Chess Association (ICCA) was formed by FIDE.

Wrong year and FIDE had nothing to do with it. ICCA was later reconstituted as ICCF.

So he cannot even be bothered to edit his own pages properly.

I think references to Bill Wall should be banned from the history section of this forum. I am surprised that somebody as seriously interested as Gerard Killoran would offer a link to one of Wall's pages.

Sorry Tim, I won't ever do that again.

Gerard Killoran wrote:Sorry Tim, I won't ever do that again.

You are forgiven.