Portsmouth Chess Invitational 1971 - Hampshire Chess History

There were numerous chess tournaments held in Southsea from the 1970’s. These were a great opportunity for local players to gain experience. Using the Hampshire Archives I have scanned the tournaments and also added these to Excel tables as some of the scans are not clear.

If you played in any of these tournaments and wished to provide any additional information or have your games from these I would love to add these to the website.

Following my articles on the Southsea Congresses played in 1975 and 1976 Arthur Brameld has supplied a tournament summary and his games from the 1971 Portsmouth Invitation which he won.

Games
Gallery
Downloads

In 1971 eight of the top players in Portsmouth were invited to play in a tournament. This was an all play all held from the 9th May to 2nd June. Arthur Brameld dominated the tournament with a plus four score, finishing one and a half points ahead of the joint second place players. I am still trying to determine Arthur’s grade but in 1972 he was graded 198 so likely would have been around the same grade in 1971.

Arthur has provided some background information.

Portsmouth Invitation
“The games were mostly played on Sunday afternoons at Southsea Community Centre, not the quietest of venues – sometimes resumed at player’s homes. Probably the most amusing anecdote I can recall was that, the longer the tournament went on, Wilf Pratten (bless him !!) was losing every game, and the conversation between some of the players was that surely, at some stage, one of us was going to feel the backlash of all this and get hammered by Wilf (the unlucky chap was, as it happened, Norman Hutchinson of Leigh Park !!!.)”

Arthur Brameld

Update July 2024

Norman Hutchinson provided his game against Wilf Pratten to Britbase to add to the Wilf Pratten archive, and I give this game below. If Norman reads this, and he has his other games from the tournament I would happily add to the article.

Arthur has kindly supplied all his games from the tournament which I have published. His games were hard fought and if you like aggressive play I would recommend playing through. A King’s Gambit, Latvian / Elephant Gambit and some aggressive attacks against the Pirc and French were among these. I also have Wilf Pratten’s loss against Maurice Johnson from the database of Wilf’s games. A long shot, but if anyone has other games from the tournament please let me know.

Tournament Crosstable

A number of well known local players participated. Small bio’s on some of the players below:

Arthur Brameld

One of the strongest players in Hampshire from the 1960’s to 1980’s. A fuller bio will be published in the future on Arthur.

M.W.Johnson

Joint Hampshire Individual Champion in 1972. By the 1980s, Johnson had moved into Correspondence Chess playing domestic and international tournaments, winning the British Correspondence Chess Association (BCCA) championship title as an outright winner for 3 consecutive years in 1989, 1990, and 1991. He became a ICCF IM in 1994 and ICCF GM in 1995.

W.H.Pratten

Four time Hampshire Individual Champion and British Boys Champion in 1924 and 1925. Wilf Pratten also formed the Portsmouth Chess League in 1947 as per the information on the Fareham Chess Club website. Wilf would have been 65 at this time of the tournament. Additional information about Wilf Pratten can be found on Britbase and Roger Paige’s book Doyen of Hampshire Chess.

A.F.C Carter

Tony Carter was a prominent player in the Portsmouth Chess League. He played for Cosham for a number of years. Personally I managed three draws against Tony in the late 1990’s early 2000’s but all were in under 30 moves.

J.H.Jones

John played for Gosport for many years, when I started playing for Gosport he was not playing that much, but was always interested in going over the games to help the other players.