Chess congress escapades

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Prompted by a tale told by David Mabbs:

Most middle Sundays (of chess congresses), which were free days, were almost always marked (or rather, marred) by some catastrophe or other. The most infamous that I recall ended with my having to be rescued (by a mountaineer and a policeman) from the shale face of a hundred-foot cliff near Whitby. As consolation, I made the front page of the Daily Telegraph - "man loses nerve on cliffs". Happy days !

I found David's piece in the ECF Newsletter of June 2016:

https://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-cont ... mber-4.pdf

THE CURSE OF THE MIDDLE SUNDAY

The Whitby cliffs story is scary!

Are there any other tales like this out there?

[Geoff Chandler]

I recall in 2018 Ding Liren breaking a leg on a rest day in Norway.

[Neil Graham]

I am afraid this is an anecdote rather than an escapade.

I played at the Southend Congress in1968 along with my father. The event was held on the 13th floor of the Civic Centre and, of course, access was by a pair of lifts. The lifts were adjacent to each other in the foyer and as becomes lifts one of them malfunctioned and all it would do was go from the Ground floor to the Basement and back. We discovered this having got into the lift gone to the Basement then returned to the Ground Floor. My father then told the assembled chess players "I shouldn't go in there - all it does is goes down and up." Unsurprisingly we got some funny looks to this statement.