Large School Chess matches

[Neill Cooper]

This evening Wilson's School, Wallington hosted a 36 board chess match with Trinity. I'd be interested to hear of other large inter-school fixtures, which I think used to happen more often in the past. I've heard that in 1966 Whitgift played Trinity over 36 boards. Have people played in such matches?

Tonight's fixture was split over 6 sub-matches, with 2 matches being one game and 4 being 2 game fixtures. Trinity won in total by 32.5 to 27.5.

[Richard James]

In the 1990s, two local primary schools, Sheen Mount and St Stephen's, played two matches (one of which I witnessed) over about 140 boards. Both schools had enthusiastic heads who taught the whole school to play.

[Neill Cooper]

Amazing. I can't see any secondary school match getting anywhere near that.

[Michael Jones]

I'm very impressed - my school usually managed to put out two 5 board teams in the county league, and might have managed a third if everyone had been available at the same time (as anyone who's ever captained a team will know, if you have a pool of players and a match on a particular date, usually at least 1/3 of them won't be able to make it). Even if we had managed 15 or 16 boards there would probably only have been one other school in the county which would have had a chance of putting out the same number to make a match. With no pun intended, I think Richard has hit the nail on the head: being able to do something like that relies on having a senior member of staff who believes sufficiently strongly in the educational benefits of chess to get all or most of the kids learning, rather than just a lunchtime or after school club which might attract 15-20 members at best.

[Neill Cooper]

Yesterday we had a 40 board chess match between Sutton GS and Wilson's School. Both are state selective grammar schools. In keeping with Richard James comments above, both headmaster's were present and are active in supporting chess in their schools.