Hampshire Chess Individual Championship 1937

It seems the structure has been fixed, as it was the same as previous two years with the three sections with the top two players progressing to the final. The time control was 20 moves per hour.

F.J.H.Elwell was again successful winning his fifth and final championship.

The preliminary sections had the following players. One player missing was the runner up from the previous year Wilf Pratten.

Section I

FJH Elwell
FB Allen
HA Way
HL Parsons

Section II

WJ Fry
AB Coe
JW Webster
SB Barker
HW Varker

Section III

SL Russell
FL Taylor
EF Briscoe
RS Lockwood
AS Dance

The Hampshire Advertiser had the original entrants and it seems that Wilf Pratten was originally meant to be in Section I, but looks like he had to withdraw?

There were less details in the Hampshire Advertiser than in previous years. I have made an attempt to piece together the preliminaries. Sections I and II had some results from the Hampshire Advertiser, but none were there for section III. Update April 2023: Have found details on some of section III and have been able to recreate the table.

Section I

In section I there were only four players and FJH Elwell scored two and a half points whilst FB Allen obtained two.

Section II

In section II WJ Fry only dropped a half point and AB Coe joined him in the final with three points from the four games.

Section III

In section III SL Russell scored three and half points and FL Taylor and EF Briscoe managed two points each. Taylor won the play off to join the other players in the final.

Final

In the final Elwell lost to AB Coe but won his other four games to retain his title from 1936. The fifth title for FJH Elwell proved to be his last, but bear in mind no championship took place between 1940 and 1947. As can be seen from the championships in the 1930’s Elwell was a dominant force winning five of the ten titles.

I have located the AB Coe – FJH Elwell game which was included in the Hampshire Advertiser.

Francis Elwell played against nine times British Champion Henry Atkins in 1897 and the following link has three of his games including this game.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2086239

Francis Elwell was born in 1869 or 1870 (or thereabouts) and died on 1953 so would have been approx. 67 when he won his final title. Details from the below, which also estimate his ELO as 2263 to 2341 between 1893 and 1900 but probably at a lower level than this by 1937.
http://www.edochess.ca/players/p560.html