Hampshire Chess Under 18 Championship 1976 – 1977

Back in the 1976 the Hampshire Under 18 Championship was held over six rounds and the winner was M.A.Pagden. Those who are observant will have noticed I am not adding these in strict order and will have seen that Michael Pagdeon also won the 1977 / 1978 tournament. Therefore for four of the five years from 1973 1977 tournaments there were two back to back winners, with P.L.Hackman winning in 1973 and 1974 and Michael Pagden in 1976 and 1977.

I am not sure if I have the 1975 tournament (if there was one, as some of the records don’t have a year detailed). I will see if I can determine from these if some of these are for 1975.

The winner only dropped half a point with a draw against Southampton chess club player Martin Buckmaster in round four. Second place was Martin, who was also undefeated with four wins and two draws closely followed by Jane Seymour in third on tie-break from Ian Sherman.

11 year old Peter Wells scored two and a half points showing his potential with just under 50% from the tournament. With three girls playing this is an impressive participation percentage and I personally liked the fact that even though there were separate girl tournaments the open encouraged girls to play and all three performed extremely well with a 3rd, equal 8th and equal 12th place.

1976 / 1977 also had an under 16 open and Girls under 14 / under 18 challengers combined which are to be added.

I would encourage additional details, games, pictures from the tournament if anyone has them?