Going to the wrong venue for a game

[Alex Holowczak]

Tonight, I travelled to Wolverhampton to see my team of juniors in action in a Summer League game. Upon arrival, the players at Wolverhampton were surprised - we weren't supposed to be playing them. After consulting my calendar, I realised my team was playing in Walsall, and I'd gone to completely the wrong club.

Luckily I wasn't playing, and the rest of the team had successfully gone to the right area of the Black Country without difficulty. I turned up at about 8:30 after hastily catching the 529 bus and a train to Tame Bridge Parkway.

Has anyone else gone to completely the wrong club for a league match by accident? Did you manage to get to the correct club in time to play the game?

(We won 4.5-0.5, so the journey was worth it?)

There was no merry-go-round on the way back; I was happy to be offered a lift.

[John Upham]

Alex,

I have managed to take a team to our opponents home venue when they had correctly traveled to their opponents home venue!

Both teams were waiting for each other to arrive at the opposite venue.

I suspect that this constitutes a "senior moment"!

[Alex Holowczak]

I have managed to take a team to our opponents home venue when they had correctly traveled to their opponents home venue!

I don't think that's so bad; at least you went to the club who you were supposed to be playing!

[Ian Thompson]

I had an adjournment where I went to my opponent's club to continue the game and he went to mine.

I was in a team that turned up at our opponent's club a week before the match was due to be played.

I turned up at a 1 round-a-day tournament only to discover it was the mid-tournament rest day (which I had thought was the following day).

I went to the 1997 British Championship prize giving to collect the U2300 rating prize only to see it being given to the player who came 4th in the category.

[John Philpott]

In October 2009 I turned up at Golden Lane where the majority of London League matches take place to find no sign of my Wanstead & Woodford team mates and belatedly realised that on the night in question we were playing Metropolitan at Petticoat Sqaure. I just made it to the correct venue before default time, and managed to draw the game in the second session which gave us a 5½ - 4½ win in the match.

[Roger de Coverly]

There's a Bourne End in Bucks and also a Bourne End in Herts. To compound the problem, both have been used for county matches. So if you are arranging a match between Bucks and Herts to be played in Bourne End, exceptional care is needed. I can recall one match at "our" Bourne End where Herts were three short. I think they won 12-8 (12-5 on games played) which was disappointing, to say the least.

There's also a Hazlemere in Bucks and a Hazlemere in Surrey. This caught out a Kent player once even though he was living in Slough at the time ( which is in Berks but ceremonially in Bucks on the pre 74 boundaries).

In fact any match with a club whose club night is the same as your own requires a bit of care to make sure the less organised or geographically challenged players know where to go.

[John Upham]

I believe a player scheduled to represent England at the 1970 Siegen Olympiad arrived in the correct country and to the correct venue but two weeks early. He remained at the venue, ran out of money and had to return on the day his team mates arrived!

[Roger de Coverly]

I believe a player scheduled to represent England at the 1970 Siegen Olympiad arrived in the correct country and to the correct venue but two weeks early. He remained at the venue, ran out of money and had to return on the day his team mates arrived!

The player concerned was due to play in both the Student Olympiad and the Siegen Olympiad. It was the Student Olympiad he was early for. As a consequence he dropped out of the full Olympiad team for Siegen. His replacement was a player who had the confidence of selectors and journalists but probably not his university contemporaries. The net result was England's worse result until recent years.

[John Upham]

I once went to Castle Donnington to observe the reformation of Deep Purple with the correct line-up (plus The Scorpions and Blackfoot) in a battered Mark 1 1100 Ford Escort.

Some of my friends attempted to see the same concert at Donnington Castle near Newbury!
They were a little late.

How we laughed

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I believe a player scheduled to represent England at the 1970 Siegen Olympiad arrived in the correct country and to the correct venue but two weeks early. He remained at the venue, ran out of money and had to return on the day his team mates arrived!

The player concerned was due to play in both the Student Olympiad and the Siegen Olympiad. It was the Student Olympiad he was early for. As a consequence he dropped out of the full Olympiad team for Siegen. His replacement was a player who had the confidence of selectors and journalists but probably not his university contemporaries. The net result was England's worse result until recent years.

Are we not naming names?

[Roger de Coverly]

Are we not naming names?

It's left as an exercise for the historical researcher.

[John Clarke]

Fouled up once in the 70s, when due to play a Civil Service League match for the Dept of Education & Science (DES) against the Natural History Museum. My actual place of work was the V & A Museum, in those days part of the DES empire.

Set off from the V & A and arrived in good time at the DES HQ near Waterloo ... only to realise after an argument with the door staff that it was an away match. Back on the tube to South Ken, and the proper venue! Arrived at the NHM, which would have been a short walk from my original starting point, just in time to avoid default.

(Alas this saga did not have a happy ending. With only half an hour for 36 moves, I soon went astray in an unfamiliar opening. But the real error was to have shown up at all. We'd still have lost that board, but the no-show result wouldn't have impacted my grading!)

[John Philpott]

Roger de Coverly wrote

There's also a Hazlemere in Bucks and a Hazlemere in Surrey. This caught out a Kent player once even though he was living in Slough at the time ( which is in Berks but ceremonially in Bucks on the pre 74 boundaries).

Not to mention a Hayes in Kent and a Hayes in Middlesex: I can recollect a Sussex player going to the wrong one.

[Paul Buswell]

There's also a Hazlemere in Bucks and a Hazlemere in Surrey.

Sorry sir, I believe you'll find the Surrey one spells itself with an s not a z.... so perhaps a typo on the match invitation was the true cause?

PB

[Jonathan Bryant]

Are we not naming names?

It's left as an exercise for the historical researcher.

Is the person who turned up early Basman? (And if my memory of reading the reports in the chess magazines of the time doesn't fail me - as it might well do - wasn't there a suggestion of him being given a wrong date?