99th British #Chess Championships 2012

[Andrew Martin]

Enjoy the assorted sound effects:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQTZJ2mjmlQ&feature=plcp

[Gavin Strachan]

Gavin >I've never been to a British before. Is there a dress code? Is it ok to wear a t-shirt?<

They would prefer you also to wear some sort of garment from the waist down.
Please don't wear a tee shirt with an unduly provocative message.

I think that is a nightie. Maybe T-shirt with hotpants.

Just thinking what they used to wear:

[Stewart Reuben]

That Brentwood CC photo is fabulous. Who is the child? Nobody can be sen smoking! What is its date?

British Senior entry fee. There has been a lag between the entry fee income and the prize money for this event. That is because the number of entries has been increasing, albeit irregularly.
I don't know how the entry fees have been calculated since I stopped running the event regularly in 1997. I suspect it has been to look at the previous year's entry fee and make a decision concerning inflation and expected number of entries. I had a more complex, but not necessarily superior, system. When I set it up in 2009, I did not have time to do a more elaborate calculation.
1. Determine the running costs (RC) of the congress, after taking into account sponsorship, charity and estimated donation income.
2. Determine for each event the number of days play (D) and the number of players expected (N). RC divided by DxN gives the cost per day per player for each event
3. Determine the prize fund for the event P and divide by N. That gives the sum to be charged to each entrant for the prizes.
4. Add 2 and 3 and then VAT, now at 20%, rounded off to the nearest whole number. That then gives the entry fee for each event.

The whole event is more complex than in 1997. This is partly because of the increase in the web publicity and game transmission

[Andrew Farthing]

That Brentwood CC photo is fabulous. Who is the child? Nobody can be sen smoking! What is its date?

I don't know the date, but the child is Reshevsky.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

That Brentwood CC photo is fabulous. Who is the child? Nobody can be sen smoking! What is its date?

I don't know the date, but the child is Reshevsky.

The photo is from the archives of the New York Times, as can be seen here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Samue ... _World.JPG

Go here:

http://www.nytstore.com/

Search for Reshevsky:

http://www.nytstore.com/Chess-Master--1920_p_5196.html

The photo is from 1920. Not sure if anyone has an exact date or location, but if it is in France (as the NYT page says) then it would be before his parents moved to the USA in November of that year. Not sure when the NYT published the photo (presuming they did and it is not just a stock one they didn't publish).

Going back to the NYT store, search for chess and you get this one from 1952:

http://www.nytstore.com/Chess-Players--1952_p_4749.html

[Gavin Strachan]

That Brentwood CC photo is fabulous. Who is the child? Nobody can be sen smoking! What is its date?

I don't know the date, but the child is Reshevsky.

The photo is from the archives of the New York Times, as can be seen here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Samue ... _World.JPG

Go here:

http://www.nytstore.com/

Search for Reshevsky:

http://www.nytstore.com/Chess-Master--1920_p_5196.html

The photo is from 1920. Not sure if anyone has an exact date or location, but if it is in France (as the NYT page says) then it would be before his parents moved to the USA in November of that year. Not sure when the NYT published the photo (presuming they did and it is not just a stock one they didn't publish).

Going back to the NYT store, search for chess and you get this one from 1952:

http://www.nytstore.com/Chess-Players--1952_p_4749.html

I thought it was Stewart but not sure they had cameras when he were a lad

The best bit about the photo is all the players must be over 60 (or they had a tough life) and Sam is, I think, 7.

Shows they had the same problem in those days as today, after juniors go off to uni they don't come back and play chess until they are grandparents.

[Andrew Farthing]

The best bit about the photo is all the players must be over 60 (or they had a tough life) and Sam is, I think, 7.

If the photo dates from 1920, Reshevsky would have been 8 or 9 (b.1911).

[Christopher Kreuzer]

The best bit about the photo is all the players must be over 60 (or they had a tough life) and Sam is, I think, 7.

If the photo dates from 1920, Reshevsky would have been 8 or 9 (b.1911).

What do you mean if?

Read all about it here (French newspaper clippings):

http://kevinspraggett.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... -1920.html

That photo was the front cover of Le Mirroir for 23 May 1920.

Photos from a similar event in Berlin as well.

And if you look on chessgames, some of the games appear to be there as well (look at the date and the surnames of the opponents, and a prize if anyone can match a game with one of the positions in the photo).

[JustinHorton]

Just to tediously point out again that on the website homepage

The 99th Championships of British Isles

should be

The 99th Championships of the British Isles.

[Stewart Reuben]

Nobody knows the definitive age of Sammy Reshevsky, possibly not even Sammy. I met a family member at the poker table in Vegas and he said that Sammy's age had been falsified to make him younger than his real age. Other people have made similar comments. I never thought to discuss the whole matter with Sammy, indeed we hardly ever spoke even though he played in the first international tournament I ever ran in 1973.

[JustinHorton]

Hurrah! We have a "the". Thank you.

[James Pratt]

Reshevsky gave a simul in Paris 'under the patronage of Princess George (sic) of Greece' and since his family took him to the US in the autumn, we may conclude the picture was taken earlier than the fall of 1920. (ref Quarterly for Chess History, 7/2001.)

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Reshevsky gave a simul in Paris 'under the patronage of Princess George (sic) of Greece' and since his family took him to the US in the autumn, we may conclude the picture was taken earlier than the fall of 1920. (ref Quarterly for Chess History, 7/2001.)

Thank-you, but isn't the date of 23 May 1920 for the front cover of Le Mirroir even more precise? Not that it is an exact date, but it had to be before then. Unless he gave more than one simul in Paris. I suppose the sources for the Quarterly for Chess History would be contemporary French newspaper reports? Or maybe not. It is only recently that some newspapers have been making their scanned archives available online. (Um, though of course people can travel to offline archives...)

PS. Princess George of Greece is almost certainly not "sic". Would it be the one mentioned here?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituar ... nover.html

"Princess George of Greece (the well-known French author and psychoanalyst, Marie Bonaparte)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Marie_Bonaparte

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Princess George (sic)"

The official title of the wife of Prince George is Princess George (unless she holds another title, e.g. being a princess already). Readers may recall Princess Michael being mentioned in newspapers occasionally.

And the first wife of Prince Charles would have been Princess Charles, had she not been designated "Diana, Princess of Wales". The gutter press wrongly called her "Princess Diana", presumably to save space.

[Andy Howie]

I've never been to a British before. Is there a dress code? Is it ok to wear a t-shirt?

I was thinking of wearing my new one