Hampshire Chess Individual Championship 1935

In 1935 there were three preliminary sections of five players where the top two players progressed to the final where an all play all was undertaken.

The preliminary sections had the following players:

Section I

FL Taylor
SL Russell
FJH Elwell
AS Dance
EF Briscoe

Section II

WH Pratten
KD Lloyd
WW Alldritt
JS West
HA Way

Section III

H Grover
WJ Fry
AB Coe
JW Webster
FJ Tinkler

At this stage regular player GP Britton (Taunton School) was at Oxford University where he played in the Varsity Match four times, hence he would not have been able to play in the Hampshire Championship in this period.

For a list of the winners of the Hampshire Individual Championship and links to any articles I have written the table on the Hampshire Individual Championship is the best place to look. In addition, the table on the Hampshire Tournaments will detail these and any other tournament articles I have completed. Both of these are available from the menu at the top of the site as well.

Section I

In section I reigning champion FJH Elwell failed to qualify to the final finishing third behind FL Taylor and SL Russell who both scored three points from their five games. The total scores of the preliminaries were included in the archives, but not the scores against each other. However, with some results being available from the Hampshire Advertiser and a bit of logical deduction I think I have re-created them correctly?

With players of the calibre of Frank Elwell not qualifying from the preliminaries it shows that these were tough competitions. Even at this stage entries would probably have had to be approved by the Hampshire Chess Association, rather than just accepted. With the numbers in the preliminaries normally being 12 to 15 and split into two or three sections I think this supports this position?

Section II

In section II the first showing of prominent Hampshire Chess player Wilf Pratten was seen in the championship. He scored three and a half points ahead of HD Lloyd on three points, and they both qualified to the final.

Section III

In section III H Grover scored three and a half points and 1934 runner up WJ Fry scored three points to also qualify. The strong Hampshire player AB Coe missed out this year, along with JW Webster and FJ Tinkler.

Final

In what must have been a surprise Broughton Chess club player SL Russell won all his five games to win the Hampshire Individual Chess Championship for 1935. If you have not heard of Broughton, it is a village about 10 miles north of Romsey. SL Russell was instrumental in creating the chess club in this region, although I am not sure how long it was in existence for? They did win the Hampshire League Division Two Trophy in the 1930/31 season and certainly played in this competition on and off from 1927 to 1937.

As to SL Russell this was his only Hampshire Championship win although he played for Hampshire County over 70 times up to 1972. He also played in one of the all play all competitions in the 1981 WECU Championship held in Winchester.

Wilf Pratten had to withdraw from the competition. From the Hampshire archive scan it seems he lost his games against WJ Fry and FL Taylor, so I have left these results as per the scan.