A thank you to Ray Keene for the Staunton and other events

[Stewart Reuben]

Quite correct about Patrick Taylor. I expect there are others I have forgotten.
Is anybody willing to create a roll of such people? Beware, it will be much more time consuming than the FIDE Roll of Honour for English players and administrators and that took some time and, I have no doubt, is still incomplete.
Stewart Reuben

[Leonard Barden]

[quote="Stewart Reuben"] The Sunday Times sponsorship of the National Schools Championship was a large sum over many years. I have no idea who instigated that.

It was Hugh Alexander, at that time the Sunday Times correspondent.

[Leonard Barden]

I very much doubt I could list the largest donors. But I assume that made by John Robinson was the largest in the history of British chess, even taking into account inflation. In my time, the second largest must surely be Jim Slater. But the effect globally and nationally of Slater's contribution is breath-taking.

I don't think that is correct, even including the £50,000 doubling of the Fischer-Spassky prize fund which was not a direct donation to British chess. Money for the first five British grandmasters totalled £15,000. Slater backed Hastings for around four years, probably around £25,000 a year. Directly and then through the charitable Slater Foundation he supported junior chess for 10-12 years from 1958 to the late 1960s, averaging £5000-£7000 a year.

So the overall total was probably under £200,000, or under £250,000 including Fischer-Spassky. The great advantage of the Slater money was that it could be used flexibly and at short notice, eg to back juniors in simuls against GMs or the group which went to Lone Pine in 1978. Slater was fine to work with as he made decisions instantly, particularly in 1971 when we had Miles and Stean as serious contenders for the 1973 world junior but only the host country could have two players. When I explained this he immediately offered to put up half the money.

Slater really only asked for something in return from chess in 1977 when he was threatened with extradition to Singapore and a likely Changi jail term over alleged financial mismanagement. So the leading chess columns all ran articles praising his help for world chess and for British juniors. It is unclear whether this campaign had a significant influence on the favourable outcome for Slater.

Eventually Slater tired of chess and switched his money to junior tennis scholarships in a scheme which produced Tim Henman.

Lloyds Bank sponsored from 1977 to 1994, with an average outlay of around £20,000-£25,000 pa, so a overall total of approaching half a million, about twice that of Slater. We did have two serious advantages-Sir Jeremy Morse, a renowned problemist, was the bank's chairman for this period while the sponsorship manager had a son who was a keen player.

I assured the sponsorship manager at the start that there would be significant press publicity. So the 1977 launch event , a clock simul Karpov v England juniors, made some newspaper front pages and later we began the Lloyds Bank Masters with a blitz game between a star GM and a child. I also got Lloyds Bank chess stories in local papers via the Press Association. The result was that at the peak there were around 700 Lloyds Bank chess press mentions a year, far more than all the bank's other sponsorships combined.

In consequence of the good press coverage the bank's chess backing increased until in the 1980s Lloyds Bank, brilliantly organised by Stewart Reuben and his hand-picked team, became one of the best opens in the world and all English juniors worth the mention (there were very many such at that time) got a grant-aided or subsidised entry.

Eventually the sponsorship manager retired and his successor wanted television coverage, which chess couldn't provide, so the sponsorship ended in 1994.

[E Michael White]

Thats an interesting history - thank you Mr Barden

[Stewart Reuben]

I had rather assumed most readers were aware of the importance of the Lloyds Bank and Evening Standard sponsorships (that also generated by Leonard). Then the Cutty Sark Grand Prix was tremedously influential. That became Leigh Industries and then Terry Chapman. Leonard was in charge of gthat practically throughout its history.
The influence of Lloyds Bank Masters went well beyond these shores. Leonard said to me in 1977 that we should try to get people title norms. I replied that it was impossible, but tried anyway, using pairings directed to that purpose rather than a simple pairing system. There were 66 players, only 30 rated, 12 foreign and 6 IMs or GMs (or something like that). I selected 5 people to concentrate on and all got I M norms. Basman, Bellin, Birnboim, Formanek and Webb (again from a fallible memory).
This was the first-ever open Swiss where people got norms and in short order it was imitated worldwide.
Take a look at the bulletin some time. It is a collector's piece. Leonard hand-wrote it.
Stewart Reuben

[James Pratt]

Handwritten? It has LWB's dabs all over it but I thought it was the Aaronson which was in handwriting.

[Stewart Reuben]

James Pratt >Handwritten? It has LWB's dabs all over it but I thought it was the Aaronson which was in handwriting.<

I can't remember ever having a senior moment.

The 1977 Lloyds Bank Masters Bulletin was definitely handwritten and it was by Leonard Barden.
The 1978 Aaronson Masters was definitely done on a typewriter, mainly by Kevin Wicker with one finger. I selected the games that were to appear. Simon Brown may remember that because he helped me.

Stewart Reuben