English Chess Forum

Hi all, was wondering if anyone knows what the record there is for this, both over the board and online?

This is the most I've found for online, 38 vs. 38 in this friendly match: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/live ... 6204/games

22nd October 1927, London, Civil Service 210.5 - 297.5 Rest of England (although mainly Home Counties)

A N - S Match at Barbican - Chess

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Tue May 18, 2021 11:07 pm

22nd October 1927, London, Civil Service 210.5 - 297.5 Rest of England (although mainly Home Counties)

Kevin is the expert historian here and will no doubt correct me if I’ve got it wrong. The match took place on a Saturday afternoon and in those days Saturday mornings were part of the normal working week, so this would have been convenient for a lot of people. I have it buried in my head that the match was played at the Ministry of Health building that is now 1 Parliament Street with a Revenue & Customs plaque on the door. I imagine Wilfred Kirk was central to the organisation of the event. Perhaps people brought their own sets, but can you imagine finding 254 clocks in 1927. Is there anything in the BCM? I’d love to see photographs, wouldn’t you?

Peter Hornsby wrote: ↑

Tue May 18, 2021 10:48 pm

This is the most I've found for online, 38 vs. 38

Go back fifty years or more. fifty and seventy five board county matches were commonplace.

... and a text report from the Sunday Pictorial, 23 October 1927...

Incidentally, Mrs Mirza (also rendered as Mrs F Mirza, Mrs Murza and Mrs Perin Mursah in various other places online and contemporary newspapers) took part in the 1932 BCF Congress in London. The Alamy photo archive has a better photo of her playing in 1932.

Thanks John. These are wonderful. Could that possibly be a young Malcolm Pein sitting to Mrs Mirza’s left? Hmmm!

Looking at the photographs, they weren't using clocks! Clocks were not made compulsory in the CS League until the late 70s... It was scheduled as a 500-board match, but obviously they got extra players and made sure everyone got a game. It was intended as a fund-raiser after the recent international event (the first Olympiad). David is right, Saturday morning working was common-place and only stopped in the Civil Service in the late 60s (I think), apart from those people on shift work of course. Having a match on a Saturday afternoon was quite useful, as players were already there, and perhaps got better value for money for their rail or bus ride to work.

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Wed May 19, 2021 8:18 am

Looking at the photographs, they weren't using clocks! Clocks were not made compulsory in the CS League until the late 70s...

That’s a sobering thought for those of us of a certain age. I was playing school chess in the 1970s, and I don’t think we used clocks on all boards (I had a game which went for adjudication at around move 20), but I would not have known that ‘adult’ leagues were not necessarily using clocks by then.

My report on the event commented that it was reported as far away as the Hull Daily Mail, but now I see that the Dundee Evening Telegraph reported it. I have noticed that London Civil Service Chess events were reported in Scottish newspapers on a number of occasions.

On the lack of clocks, I think the players tended to just get on with it. The deliberately slow play to try and draw on adjudication was not common-place then, although it did happen. The match was throughout 26 rooms, and looks pretty crowded, imagine how many rooms they would have needed if the players had reasonable space.

In the photo below the one of Mrs Mirza (and variants thereof), the bottom board is the wrong way round, and is either empty or has an ending with very little material in the bottom right corner. Maybe it hasn't started yet, as nearby boards seem to be in the opening.

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Wed May 19, 2021 9:16 am

imagine how many rooms they would have needed if the players had reasonable space.

Some of the weekend tournaments of the 1970s exceeded the thousand player mark, playing simultaneously. At the Islington Green school, the Congress would not only have occupied the main hall but also a sports hall and numerous classrooms.

Before that in the late 1960s, for a season or two all the SCCU county matches, including 75 board ones, took place at the Royal Festival Hall on the same Saturday unless there was a reasonable geographic reason not to travel to London. That had chess sets stretching in all directions.

A recent large fixture was the SCCU 125th Anniversary match played over 68 boards (with clocks!).
See the report at https://sccu-chess.com/index.php/en/rep ... sary-match which also refers to an earlier 400 board match in 1921.

One thing has just struck me about the photos - the boards appear to be made of something light and thin and flexible, not unlike modern flexible plastic boards. I had thought this was something that was new in the late 1960s or early 1970s with the coming of large-scale tournaments such as the ones Roger mentions. My first memories of earlier 1960s large-scale events were of relatively heavy non-folding wooden boards being the norm. They needed considerable muscle when they needed to be packed away (along with the equally heavy wooden pieces). I remember watching the packing process after a Marlow Congress and making a mental note never to become an organiser or an arbiter as I lacked the necessary muscle! But apparently they had a practical solution to this problem back in 1927, which must have saved them a lot of heavy lifting (although the pieces would still have been of the heavy wooden variety). Makes me wonder what those boards were made of. Would it have been some early form of plastic? Or textile? Or paper or card?

Re clocks: one wonders whether 500 chess clocks could be found in the entire country in 1927. They would have cost a fortune to buy. Maybe some clocks were used on higher boards which we can't see in the photos. I recall 1960s school chess matches in which the higher boards played with clocks but there not being enough for all the boards of a match.

I had a further thought about a match that might have been even bigger - back in the fifties(?) I think there was a 'Teenagers vs Old Stagers' match, but I think it was held over several different venues, with the results being totted up nationwide to count as a single match. But maybe it doesn't count as it wasn't staged as one match in a single venue.