The Westminster Papers. 2nd SEPTEMBER, 1878. THE CHESS WORLD. "The Whisperings of our petty burgh." THE month of August opened amid the excitement consequent upon the close of the greatest struggle for championship that has ever occurred in the history of Chess, and before the inevitable reaction had set in, a fresh fillip was given to the interest and curiosity of Metropolitan amateurs by the arrival in London of Messrs. Mackenzie, Mason, Bird, and Blackburne, the representative players of America and England. Had they come back prizeless, their reception would have been a cordial one, we answer for it, but bearing among them half the honours of the competition—three prizes out of six-there was the praise of desert to greet them, as well as welcome, from their personal friends. The lion's share of the Kudos fell to Mr. Mackenzie, for "the Captain" has old friends in London to rejoice in his successes, and the signal defeat he inflicted upon the first and second prize-winners gained him—as success always does-many new ones. Whenever the right thing has to be done in London in connection with Chess, the Committee of the City Club are always the first persons to see it and to set about doing it. Of course it was the right thing to celebrate the return of our own champions from Paris, and the visit of Messrs. Mackenzie and Mason by a dinner. A dinner was accordingly arranged, and it was held at the rooms of the City Club, Mouflet's Hotel, Newgate Street, on the 9th ultimo. The chair was occupied by Mr. R. Clarke, the President of the Club, and the vice-chair by Mr. H. F. Gastineau, the Vice-President. The guests of the occasion Messrs. Mackenzie, Mason, Blackburne, and Bird were " toasted" with due honours, and Messrs. Mossop, Potter, and Duffy were congratulated upon the "enterprise and skill" displayed in the production of the August number of "THE WESTMINSTER PAPERS." The health of the Honorary Secretary, Mr. H. F. Down, was proposed by the Vice-President, Mr. Gastineau, and there was besides a great deal of very "excellent speaking" in praise of Chess and its exponents-present and absent— from Messrs. Macdonnell, Gumpel, and Cubison. The dinner was a great success, and the manner in which it was served elicited warm commendations of the resources of that comfortable hostelry, Mouflet's Hotel. The annual meeting of the Counties Chess Association was held this year in London, and was opened at King's College on the 29th July. For the Challenge Cup tournament there were thirteen entries, viz.: Messrs. Barbier, Beardsell, Coker, Earnshaw, Ensor, Fisher, Jenkin, Martin, Minchin, J. I. Minchin, Ranken, Thorold and Professor Wayte. The cup was won by Mr. Thorold, in what the late Mr. Staunton called cloud-compelling style, his score showing 11 out of a possible 12; the second prize was gained by the Rev. Mr. Ranken, and Messrs. Jenkin and Ensor divided the third. The second class tourney attracted very few entries we believe, but we have seen no list; the first prize was won by Mr. J. de Soyres, and the second by Master Jackson, of Dewsbury, a youth of the mature age of thirteen. There was a handicap tourney also, the conduct of which has provoked some unfavourable criticism from the Chess press, with special reference to the admission of the mechanical player" Mephisto " to the lists of the tourney. We have it upon tolerably respectable authority that the "Devil" is a gentleman, and presumably, therefore, eligible to take part in a tourney of the "gentle game." But somehow there is a wild suspicion abroad-a lying spirit, no doubt that the "Devil" admitted to this handicap tourney is occasionally subjected to a mundane influence about whose "gentility" no sort of guarantee can be offered by anyone because it is anonymous. He-the mundane personage we mean-is the great or little Unknown of the Chess world, and, moreover, it is altogether uncertain whether he is not, like Mrs. Malaprop's Cerberus, "three," or indeed any number of gentlemen "at once." Anyhow, the admission of a toy of this kind to a Chess tournament is a freak that could not have been expected from a Committee whose gravity is proverbial. The Management was entrusted with the administration of a Society whose principal claim to consideration is that it was formed for the cultivation of Chess among Amateurs-plainly, lovers of the game for its own sake. How then can this Management justify the admission of a foreign professional player to the handicap tourney ? The first surprise for the Chess World-having regard to the laws of the Association-was that Mr. Macdonnell, who was entreated to enter the lists, was drawn against a foreign professional player. When this emotion was dissipated by the professional player's retirement, he was drawn against Colonel Minchin, and then, to cap the absurdity which has marked all the proceedings in connection with this tourney he was matched against-the "Devil"! Naturally, Mr. Macdonnell declined the encounter, and when, as Ingoldsby hath it, or very nearly so, The Fiend made a grasp, Macdonnell to clasp, The latter just lifted his foot, and lo! Where the tail joins on to the small of his back. Of course there was no such incident in this case. Mr. Macdonnell has no predilection for unbecoming ltercations, and the same observation is equally applicable to the deservedly popular amateur who is the owner of Mephisto. For that ingenious piece of mechanism we have no feeling but unqualified admiration. The working of the machine is, to all appearance, automatic, the deception of observers in that respect being perfect, but, after all, the deception, which is admirable in a toy, is altogether out of place in the serious business of a Chess tournament. If it was at all desirable to admit Mephisto to the lists of the handicap, then the name of the concealed player should have been disclosed, at least to the competitors, if not to the general public. The result of this remarkable handicap was that Mr. F. S. Ensor scored second honours. The award of the judges in the problem tourney of the British Problem Association will be found in another page of this Issue. It is a noteworthy circumstance in connection with this tourney that eight out of the eleven sets contributed to it have been "cooked" by the Examiners, and another is that the amount of the third prize has to be reserved for a future competition in consequence. When will problem composers take the lesson to heart that accuracy is the foundation upon which their conceptions should be reared, and that without that quality the edifice is worthless. The Huddersfield College Magazine announces a solution tourney, commencing with the problems in the October number. Six prizes are offered, viz., First: Three volumes of THE WESTMINSTER PAPERS; Second: A copy of Chess Gems; Third: Two volumes of the Chess Players' Chronicle; Fourth: One volume of the American Chess Journal; Fifth: The Derbyshire Advertiser, for twelve months, and Sixth: the Ayr Argus and Express for six months. The current number (September) contains a continuation of Mr. Andrew's article upon "English Problem Masters," with selections from Bolton's work, Chess Jottings by the editor, and a letter on the subject of problem construction from Mr. W. T. Pierce. The "question of honour," submitted to the Chess world in our last number has provoked a number of replies; but each of them is accompanied by a request that the writer's name shall not be published. We gladly comply with the desire of any and every writer who dislikes, or fears, to subscribe his name to his views upon a Question of Honour. An admirable novelette, by M. A. Delannoy, has been published in the Argus and Express of Ayr, entitled Qui perd gagne. It was, we believe, contributed, in French, by M. Delannoy; but the translation into English has evidently been the work of a sympathetic, as well as an accomplished, writer. We have not seen the original composition; but the translation is marked by all the graceful imagery that distinguishes M. Delannoy's writings, and is supplemented by a force of diction that must necessarily be credited to his translator. It is the work, we believe, of the editor of the Chess column in the newspaper mentioned, a gentleman who, we venture to predict, will not, for a long time, have reason to say that his writings have little influence upon public opinion. The column in the Argus is exceedingly well conducted, and we rank it among the highest of our exchanges. Following quickly upon the great meeting of Chess players at Paris, there was an assemblage of amateurs at Frankfort-on-Maine, which, at any other time, would have engrossed the attention of Chess Players throughout the world. For the masters' tourney there were ten entries, viz.-Messrs. Anderssen, Fritz, Hammacher, Metger, Minckwitz, Louis Paulsen, W. Paulsen, Stern, Schwartz, and Wemmers. The first prize in this competition, 400 marks, was won by Herr L. Paulsen, and the three smaller ones fell to Messrs. Schwartz, Anderssen, and Minckwitz, in the order named. The following is the full score :-L. Paulsen, 8; Schwartz, 7; Anderssen, 6; Minckwitz, 5; W. Paulsen 4; Fritz, 4; Metger, 4; Wemmers, 3; Stern, 2, and Hammacher, . As at Leipsic last year, Herr L. Paulsen proved the conqueror, a circumstance that will increase the regret of all Chess-players that this great master of our age was prevented attending the larger gathering at Paris. There appears to be some trouble brewing among our transatlantic cousins in reference to the problem tourney of the American Chess Association. The Turf Field and Farm charges the management with practices, it is not very clear of what nature, but, at all events, opposed to the laws of the Society. We have no intention of expressing any opinion upon the subject, and only mention it to express a hope that the charges have no better foundation than idle rumour. Our readers will remember that the fourth prize in this tourney was awarded to the set bearing the motto, "Che sara sara," the composition of Mr. William Coates, of Cheltenham. We give below the two-move problem from this set, and accompanying it the composition of Mr. S. Loyd, which gained the prize for the best two-move problem. Since the publication of the award in in this tourney, one of the sets which preceded it in the list of honours has been discovered to be faulty, and, as is usual in problem tournies of late, the award, we suppose, will be cancelled, so far as that set is concerned. It is worth noting that the discovery of the flaw is due to the research of a Huddersfield working man. As we predicted last month, the intelligence of Captain Mackenzie's score in the Paris tourney has given great satisfaction to his friends in the States, and it is very pertinently pointed out, that having defeated the first and second prize winners in the individual encounters over the board, he cannot be considered inferior to them in skill. The following extract from the Turf, Field, and Farm will be read with interest in England, as it holds out a hope that another international tournament is likely to be soon arranged :--" It is with great satisfaction that we perceive from the record of the tournament, that although securing but fourth place. Capt. M.'s score is really the best of them all. A correspondent points out the suggestive fact, that had the contest been solely between the winners of the four prizes, presumably the best players, and that they had won and lost the games, as in the actual score, Mackenzie would have been at the head of the list. An examination of the record shows the following result of the games played between Zukerfort, Winawer, Blackburne and Mackenzie : It is to be said to the credit of the American representative moreover, that he was the only one in the contest who defeated the first and second prize-winners, so that it actually appears that it was against the weaker players that our representative had the least success. On the whole, the Chess players of this country will not be likely to accept the decision of this tournament as settling the question in favour of the superiority of the players of Europe -certainly not without a further trial, and we are glad to say that some public-spirited and responsible gentlemen in this city are already devising a programme for a grand tournament on a colossal scale, to be held in this city next year, to which all the foreign players of note will be invited. We trust that they will succeed in securing the necessary funds, and we believe that they will." We have an interesting letter from Mr. E. C. Hullett, the Honorary Secretary of the Wellington (New Zealand) Chess Clubs. Mr. Hullett informs us that the prospects of Chess in New Zealand are very encouraging, that a good Club has been formed in Wellington, with Mr. Benbow, a well-known English problem composer, as President, and that Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin also possess flourishing Chess Clubs. A handicap tourney at the Wellington Club was approaching a conclusion, Messrs. Barraud, Hullett, and Kirk having to play with each other to decide their respective positions in the first three places. BRITISH CHESS PROBLEM ASSOCIATION. The judges have agreed to award prizes as follows :— SETS. 1st Prize, "Ex sudore voluptas; 2nd Prize," Anything." SINGLE PROBLEMS.-Best 2-mover, No. 1, "Home, sweet home." Best 3-mover, No. 1, "Qui se resemble s'assemble." Best 4-mover, No. 3, "Es giebt," &c. Eight sets out of a total of eleven contained unsound problems, and as the ninth, "Home, sweet home," contained the prize 2-mover, no eligible candidate is left to take the 3rd set prize, which will therefore be reserved for a future tourney. Should any objections be raised to the validity of the prize sets or problems, communications must reach the Honorary Secretary of the Association, Mr. J. P. Taylor, 63, Malvern Road, Dalston, N., on or before the 15th instant. After that date the sealed envelopes will be opened, and the names of all competitors published contemporaneously with the Judges' report in our number for October. |