Southsea Chess Congress 1975 - Hampshire Chess History

I have obtained some games from the players who participated in the Southsea Congress. Unfortunately not from the actual tournaments, but a selection are included at the bottom of the article. In addition, downloads of the tournaments crosstables which I have added into Excel are available.

The actual scans of the Hampshire Archives original documents, which I used to create the spreadsheet version are also included.

Games
Crosstable scans
Downloads

I have found details of eight tournaments held this year, from the top Southsea Open won by Tony Carter to the Under 10s which Ian Welch was triumphant. Noticeable in the under 12’s and 10’s was the participation of future GM Peter Wells. From what I can deduce it seems each tournament was on invitation, splitting into an all play all, which is an excellent idea and unusual outside of professional and norm tournaments.

Update 15th July 2021

Tony Williams has advised that the Southsea Congress in 1975 was played on a Sunday afternoon over the following dates. These were held at the Southsea Community Centre and run by the Portsmouth Chess Club.

Round 1 June 1st
Round 2 June 15th
Round 3 June 22nd
Round 4 June 29th
Round 5 July 6th
Round 6 July 13th
Round 7 July 20th
Round 8 July 27th

Southsea Open 1975

The open was the top level tournament and looking at the participating players all were top County level strength and included players I would like to know more about. I remember some of these representing Hampshire in the West of England County matches in the 1970’s and before.

Tony Carter went through undefeated, winning by half a point from Glenn Lambert. Also noticeable as included, but not playing was W.J.E Yeeles who played in the British Champion Reserves in 1932 and an 18 year old Keith Gregory.

Southsea Challengers 1975

The 2nd tier tournament was the challengers, represented by good county and strong club players. Personally I have played three times against D.J.Scotney in the 1990s and once against Stuart Dean in 2005. Stuart played for Cosham for a number of years and was a tough opponent.

The tournament was won by D.Smith with an impressive seven points from the nine games. The cross table did not have a result from the Scotney vs Feltham, but this would not have affected the tournament result, but I have some other documentation to check which may throw more light on this?

Southsea Premier “A” 1975

Following the Championship and Challengers, there were four Premier tournaments, of which the A was the top, Looking at the grades across the tournaments it seems this was not specifically on grades, but probably had some sort of selection process.

The winner of the A tournament was Jane Seymour, who won a closely contested tournament by half a point. Stephen LeFevre is one of the players who is still playing in the Portsmouth and Southampton league. I think the N.LeFevre who played in the Challengers is his Brother.

Southsea Premier “B” 1975

The Premier B group was won by D.C Spurgeon and Sharon Prince. It has been confirmed to me that Sharon was the daughter of Roy Prince who played in the C group and she went onto Exeter University (thanks Peter Eales).

Portsmouth Stalwart Brian Cochran also played, he has been active in the Portsmouth League and Hampshire Congress for a number of year.

I.P Judd is another regular Portsmouth League regular, representing Chichester and I presume this was when he was younger, as his grade has been much higher than at this tournament.

Southsea Premier “C” 1975

The Premier C was won by A.D.Harris, not someone I am familiar with. This was a comfortable victory, finishing one and half points ahead of 2nd place. In fact only one half point was dropped, with 7 wins and one draw.

Southsea Premier “D” 1975

The Premier D seems to have a lot of junior players, as several of the players were also in one or both of the junior tournaments.

Colin Rowe and Philip Spurgeon dominated with both winning seven of their eight games. The winner of the under 10 tournament finished in third, with 6 points. I think Ian was a promising junior for Fareham Chess Club, although I don’t think he has played regularly recently.

I have found some games of Ian on the Britbase website and will include these. These are from the ARC Young Masters held in Chichester in 1981.

Southsea Under 12 1975

The first of the junior tournaments was the under 12 which was a 5 round swiss tournament with 13 entries, although only 12 played. D.C Spurgeon only dropped half a point an won ahead of Ian Welch who he defeated in round 4.

Also playing was a young Peter Wells. Peter is now a GM and being from Portsmouth would play a lot of chess in the area. But at this time, he would have been a promising junior but with no indication that of his career path.

Southsea Under 10 1975

Ian Welch who was 2nd in the under 12 won the under 10 tournament along with Gary Scotney. As per the under 12 it seems a Spurgeon stopped Ian Welch, as he lost to 3rd place Philip Spurgeon in the 2nd round.

I have played a D.Scotney in the Portsmouth Leaue in the 1990’s and it may be that Gary Scotney who tied for 1st and Julia Scotney are his Children?

These junior tournaments were obviously a great opportunity for local juniors to develop and gain experience from. As can be seen some of these players went onto great things and you can’t but think that these tournaments helped in their journey.

Ian Welch developed into a strong player as can be seen from when he played at the ARC Young Masters in 1981. This included 11 GM’s and numerous IM’s. Ian defeated future GM Stuart Conquest, who although only 14 was still a very strong player.