Brian Denman's book on the history of chess in Brighton

BRIGHTON CHESS

A HISTORY OF CHESS IN BRIGHTON
1841-1993

Brian Denman

Originally published by the author.

Republished here by Brighton & Hove Chess Club.

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY DEAR MOTHER

N.B. This book is republished on this website as closely as possible to the original format. However, the reader will appreciate that the strictures of web publishing are rather different from print and so some aspects of presentation have been altered. For example, the book originally appeared with a two column layout on every page, which would be tricky to read online where the each chapter of the book has been given a web page. Also some of the games will be animated on this website, which of course was impossible in a print edition. Excepting the page numbers, all of the text of the original publication has been retained, including the title of the last chapter.

CONTENTS

Foreword, by Raymond Keene O.B.E. vii			vii
Author’s Preface ix			ix
List of Sources xi			xi
1	1841-1879	Kennedy and his Heirs	1
2	1880-1885	The New Generation	15
3	1885-1897	The Strong Chess Centre	25
4	1897-1904	The Age of Competition	40
5	1903-1922	The Christ Church Interlude	45
6	1922-1939	A Golden Age	54
7	1939-1945	World War Two	66
8	1945-1951	Post-War Depression	68
9	1952-1963	The Juniors Point the Way	74
10	1964-1972	Town and Gown	85
11	1973-1979	National Pride but Problems at Home	98
12	1980-1986	The Last Years at 4 Pavilion Buildings	116
13	1986-1993	Chess in Brighton Today	130
Appendix			143
General Index			161
Index of Games			174
Index of Openings			176

FOREWORD

BY RAYMOND KEENE O.B.E.

It was a pleasure and an honour to be invited to write the foreword to Brian Denman’s magnum opus in chess in Brighton. It is a work of tremendous historical erudition, evidence of which is apparent on virtually every page. The research that must have gone into it was clearly immense.

As the progress of chess in Brighton unfolds, the reader will encounter an extraordinary number of brilliant players, many of whom have also played a major role on the world stage. Howard Staunton himself, the first, indeed only, British player to be regarded as the strongest in the world, both lived and played in Brighton. He makes an early and dramatic appearance in the book, winning a queen sacrifice brilliancy against Captain Kennedy (another Brighton denizen) which I have selected as the apogee of excellence in my gallery of ten great games chosen from this volume.

As the book proceeds, it is apparent that stalwart club, county and local organisers have moved mountains during this century and the last one to ensure opportunities both for the grass roots to indulge their passion, and the masters to display their skills. Brian Denman gives these workers in the cause of chess their right and proper due.

Nevertheless, it is the brilliant ideas, crystalline strategy and sparkling sacrificial strokes of the players themselves that stir the blood. These are the true adventures in chess. The list of greats featured in this book continues with Blackburne, Zukertort, Emanuel Lasker, Nigel Short, Tony Miles, even Viktor Korchnoi. Then there are the local matadors, Denman himself, Henshaw, Springgay, Hardinge (whose win against Dr J. Penrose, ten times British Champion, would have been number eleven on my list of the ten great Brighton games), Simpole, James, Pierce and many others.

If one thing marks out this book, it is the consistently high quality of the games chosen, virtually every one full of terrific, exciting and splendidly executed concepts. Study this book for its record of history, savour it for the coruscating facets of the play, but above all treasure and enjoy it.

Raymond Keene O.B.E.

The following is Ray Keene’s personal selection of the ten best games in this book, with the page numbers on which they can be found:

1 Kennedy v Staunton 4
2 Pierce v Monck 21
3 Hawes v James 105
4 Winser v Denman 92
5 Strauss v Short 94
6 Simpole v Kwiatkowski 126
7 Cornwall v Richmond 64
8 Springgay v Cannon 78
9 Mayet v Kennedy 8
10 Blackburne v Smith (game 21) 17

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Thirty-three years have now passed since I first visited the Brighton Chess Club. At the end of 1960 I was a schoolboy of twelve when I nervously played my first moves at 4 Pavilion Buildings. Nowadays, despite television coverage of the recent World Championship match, chess is still less popular in the town than it was in those seemingly far-off times.

Five years ago I decided that I wanted to discover the origins of chess in the county. As I began to delve ever more deeply into local chess history I became fascinated by the subject. At an early stage Paul Watson, the secretary of the Sussex Chess Association, and John Cannon, a prominent member of the Horsham Chess Club, provided me with valuable county records. By the summer of 1990 I had absorbed much of this information and was pleased that Colin Worsley, the librarian of the Hastings Chess Club, allowed me to use the resources of the club’s library. Colin also encouraged me to write a book about Sussex chess history, but sadly died in 1992 before the project had come to fruition.

The next stage was to visit the British Library in Central London and the British Newspaper Library at Colindale, North London. By the summer of 1991 I had completed most of my research and I started to write a history of chess in Brighton. In December of that year Chris Ravilious, who was at that time the secretary of the Eastbourne Chess Club, contacted me and offered to utilise his computing skills to help me in the preparation of the book. Since that time Chris has been extremely helpful not just with presentation but also by coming forward with several interesting ideas and much useful historical data.

Towards the end of 1993 Julian Simpole, whose association with the Brighton Chess Club goes back even further than mine, kindly offered to design a cover for the book. Then in January 1994 I was fortunate that Ray Keene, the chess correspondent for The Times who received an OBE for his services to chess, agreed to write a foreword to the history.

Finally I should like to add that in the interests of historical accuracy I have been obliged to include various references to my own role in Brighton chess, along with several of my games. I sincerely hope that readers will consider that I have written about myself in an impartial way.

Brian Denman
January 1994

Sincere thanks for help and contributions are due to:

Gerald Abayasekera
Oliver Andrew
Barry Barnes
John Barrington
Michael Barritt
The Rev J.A. Bickerstaff
John Cannon
Eric Cohen
Professor Sir John Cornforth, A.C., C.B.E., F.R.S.
The late Geoffrey Diggle
John Dodgson
Jim Graham
Ken Gunnell
John Henshaw
Nigel Holloway
Geoffrey James
George Jelliss
Penny Johnson
Ray Keene OBE
Ian Kelly
Andrew Kinsman
Feliks Kwiatkowski
David Langridge
Harry Little
Steve Newman
Mike Nicholas
Ron Nicholas
Ken Norman
Dr Douglas Opie
Chris Ravilious
Luke Rutherford
The late Professor D.B. Scott
Paul Selby
Julian Simpole
Judy Stanger
Hugh Storr-Best
Bob Taylor
Paul Watson
Ken Whyld
Alan Wiltshire
The late Colin Worsley

I should also like to thank the Hastings Chess Club for allowing me to use its library and the staff of the Brighton Reference Library for helping me to find information.

Brighton Chess was typeset in TEX running on an Atari ST computer. Fonts for the diagrams and figurine notation were designed by Piet Tutelaers of the Eindhoven University of Technology. The artwork for the front and back covers was created by Julian Simpole using a draw package on an Acorn Archimedes computer, with technical assistance from Malcolm Holt.

SOURCES

American Men and Women of Science
Bexhill Observer
Brighton Chess Club Communiqués and Minutes
Brighton Gazette (later Brighton and Hove Gazette)
Brighton Guardian
Brighton Herald (later Brighton and Hove Herald)
Brighton Society
Brighton Times
The Brightonian
British Chess — G.S. Botterill, D.N.L. Levy, J.M. Rice, M.J. Richardson (Pergamon, 1983)
British Chess Magazine
Cabbage Heads and Chess Kings — Bruce Hayden (Arco, 1960)
A Century of British Chess — Philip W. Sergeant (Hutchinson, 1934)
Chess (Chess Ltd. magazine)
Chess: Man vs Machine — Bradley Ewart (A.S. Barnes, San Diego, 1980)
Chess: the History of a Game — R.G. Eales (Batsford, 1985)
Chess Player’s Chronicle
Chess Problems: Introduction to an Art — Michael Lipton, R.C.O. Matthews, John Rice (Faber, 1963)
Emanuel Lasker, Vol. 3 — K. Whyld, ed. (The Chess Player, Nottingham, 1976)
The Encyclopaedia of Brighton — Timothy Carder (East Sussex County Libraries, 1990)
Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings — Matanovic (1974)
Guinness Chess: the Records — K. Whyld (Guinness Superlatives, 1986)
Hastings and St Leonards Observer
Howard Staunton, the English World Chess Champion — R.D. Keene and R.N. Coles (British Chess Magazine Ltd., 1975)
Illustrated London News
Local Directories
Modern Chess Openings — Griffith and White, revised Larry Evans and Walter Korn (Pitman, 1955 and 1965 editions)
The Oxford Companion to Chess — D. Hooper and K. Whyld (Oxford University Press, 1987)
Oxford Encyclopedia of Chess Games: Vol. 1, 1485-1866 — David Levy and Kevin O’Connell (Oxford University Press, 1981)
Pick of the Best Chess Problems — B.P. Barnes (Elliot Right Way Books, 1976)
The Problemist
Seven Hundred Chess Problems — Mrs W.J. Baird (Henry Sotheran, 1902)
Southern Weekly News
Sussex Chess News / Sussex Chess
Sussex Daily News
University of Sussex internally circulated documents
Waifs and Strays — Capt. H.A. Kennedy (2nd edition, 1876)
West Sussex Gazette
West Sussex Journal, Horsham, Petworth, Midhurst and Steyning Express
West Sussex Times
World Chess Champions — K. Whyld (Pergamon, 1981)
Worthing Gazette

I am grateful to Sussex secretary Paul Watson for granting me access to the Sussex Chess Archives. These consist in the main of a series of minute books, newspaper cuttings, match scores, yearbooks and reports on chess in Sussex. The Archives cover the period from 1879 to c.1968; much of the
information from 1879 to 1931 was gathered together by H.W. Butler.

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