Going to the wrong venue for a game

[Scott Freeman]

A year or so back, a strong player playing for Redhill, who used to play for CCF, arrived at CCF for a match. Having travelled up from Crawley to Coulsdon, you can imagine that he was a little frustrated to have to turn round and head several miles back towards home to the Redhill venue (which he practically drove past the door of to get to us), where the match was being played.

I was very good though - I did tell him straight away - and even texted one of the Redhill players to tell them as I recall!

[Gavin Strachan]

I had to pull out of a match due to an emergency at the last minute. I rang around and found someone who could take my place. They got completely lost and didn't turn up (fairly common unfortunately with this player despite playing in Essex for over 20 years some venues are a mystery to locate). Fortunately another member of our club was at the venue just on the off chance and took my place instead (and he was a stronger player!).

[Mike Gunn]

I have done a reverse Upham (instructed my team to turn up at the home venue when it was ana away match). We defaulted that one as the journey time was 1 hour and the default time is 30 minutes in the Surrey League.

[Richard Thursby]

In one Saturday afternoon match I turned up at what I thought was the venue only to find nobody there. This being the days before mobile phones cue then trying two or three other venues without success before giving up and going home. On arriving home, the captain had called to say where the venue was; none other than the educational establishment I attended at the time. The captain had somehow assumed that the players at said establishment would all find out from each other without him having to tell them individually.

[Michael Jones]

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"!

I did the precise opposite: my team had what was scheduled as an away match, but since getting there posed a few problems (none of us had a car and public transport was non-existent), I managed to persuade their captain to agree to play it at our venue. Sometime between making this arrangement and the date of the match, he apparently forgot that we'd done so, so they turned up at their home venue while we were waiting at ours. Since the situation had been the result of a misunderstanding, they agreed to postpone the match rather than claim the default win, but our attempts to rearrange it suffered from an even more spectacular breakdown in communications so it never actually got played.

[Matt Fletcher]

I once typed in the wrong postcode to the satnav and turned up at my captain's house instead of the venue. Was too late to correct my error so I just turned round and went home...

[Peter Ackley]

Hayes, Middx and Hayes, Kent caused problems in the National Club back in the mid noughties. A Surrey-based junior team had helpfully been given a 'local' club in the first round...!

[Steve Lloyd]

Last season my team Chester travelled to Rhyl. Rhyl had moved to a venue in nearby Prestatyn. First, we got to Rhyl and headed straight to the old venue. In the handbook were 2 addresses, the club address and the club secretary's address. The driver put in the secretary's address into the handbook, so we ended up outside his house. Then we drove to the right street, wrong town. Eventually we headed to the right place, then someone in the car said "Oh, I've actually been here before!"

Yeah thanks.

we arrived 35 minutes late and won 4.5 0.5.

[Malcolm Clarke]

I can think of one instance where a whole team went to the opposing captain's address.

When I started my second spell of playing in the Southampton Chess League in the late 1980's my first game was at Sarisbury (not Salisbury). I had played at Sarisbury during my first spell, and went to where I had previously played and found it locked. Fortunately I asked someone in the street, and they happened to have previously played chess for Sarisbury, and I was directed to the correct venue. I expect that in the majority of cases people in the street do not know where chess clubs play.

[John Moore]

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
Are we not naming names?


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

Are we not naming names?

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

Well it's certainly Basman in the first case - Martin Corden is probably the second guy. No-one will remember him but he was the fellow who beat Smyslov at Hastings in 1969-70.

[Paul Cooksey]

I reached the same conclusion, but decided to be discreet .

Actually I thought the most interesting thing I found out was in passing, that Jonathon Penrose fainted at the board during the Siegen Olympiad. I'd heard he was a nervous player, in the context of taking up correspondence, but I can't recall a story of anyone fainting before.

[John Moore]

Discreet hey - Paul. Nice to see you have joined the Forum.

[Paul McKeown]

Hayes, Middx and Hayes, Kent caused problems in the National Club back in the mid noughties. A Surrey-based junior team had helpfully been given a 'local' club in the first round...!

Peter, I happen to know of one Middlesex player who managed to turn up for an U175 county match against Surrey at Hayes, Kent, only to ring me and ask where the blinking venue was!

My worst personal venue confusion was my first ever match for Athenaeum CC against Hackney in the Middlesex League. Started off shortly after five o'clock from Upper Halliford Station, anticipating a long trek out to Dalston Kingsland. Got to the Prince of Wales, the Hackney venue, at ten to seven. Ordered a pint of Guinness. No one turned up by quarter past, I had another pint. Half past, the official start, still no one there. Asked at the bar if the "chess match was upstairs". Blank looks from the barmaid. "You mean the darts match?" "No, chess?" No one had heard of it. Suddenly light dawned behind the barmaid's eyes. "You mean the Prince of Wales on Dalston Lane?" "Yes, isn't this Dalston Lane?" "Yes, but that's our side entrance!" Two bleeding Prince of Wales's on the same blinking street!!!! Could you Adam and Eve it? Needless to say the Hackney lads laughed themselves senseless when I arrived looking rather flustered.

A few years later, I received a phone call on my mobile from our team captain as I was on a train out to the badlands. "Where are you?" "I'm on my way, I'll be at Silver Street in five minutes or so." "What? It's a home match." Happily, Mark Johnstone substituted himself and won a rather brilliant miniature that I certainly would not have emulated.

A year later I set off for Hackney, only to find an empty venue. A phone call informed me that I was a week early...

I have somehow developed a phobia about playing Hackney.

[Simon Spivack]

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.

More than a bit at times. In the days before email I told a player in person, I gave him a written note and I telephoned him. He also had a copy of the fixtures' list. He still went to the wrong place!

The way of transgressors is hard.

[Paul McKeown]

Simon,

You were my team captain when I went to the wrong Prince of Wales... you could have warned me!