Chess: this week’s English county final tests a century-old north vs south rivalry

England’s inter-county chess championship was launched in 1908, just four years after the British Chess Federation was founded. Middlesex demonstrated their early dominance by winning the first three titles, and that was no accident. Top chess clubs like West London, the popular Gambit Chess Rooms, and later the ill-fated National Chess Centre destroyed by German bombs in 1940, were all within the county borders.

Lancashire were also consistently successful. Again, no surprise, as the county had produced Britain’s two greatest masters of the 19th century. Joseph Blackburne came from Manchester, while Amos Burn worked for much of his career in Liverpool. The county chess pecking order stayed that way, with occasional wins for Surrey, Yorkshire and Kent, for nearly half a century.

The 1950-51 results brought a major surprise. A weakened Middlesex lost to Devon, a weakened Lancashire lost to Cheshire. That opened the way for Oxfordshire and its mostly academic team to take the trophy.  

Middlesex were not best pleased, and planned to regain the crown as soon as possible. The 1951-52 final was arranged on home ground for them in central London, with star names on both sides. Remarkably, it eventually boiled down to an adjudicated endgame in which Oxfordshire had a rook and Middlesex three united advanced pawns. After several days of analysis, Oxfordshire found a win.

There was a sequel 40 years later, when John Nunn’s book Tactical Chess Endings published analysis claiming it was a draw after all! However, I was able to reconstruct our analysis from 1952 proving a win by zugzwang, and Nunn generously rewrote that section for a new edition of his book.

In the 2020s, Surrey is probably the strongest county, but it is close. Last season there was a remarkable near-success for Northumberland, which had not entered a team for many years but which reached the semi-final.

Saturday’s Greater Manchester vs Surrey final (1.30pm start) can be followed game by game here.

A week after the counties final, chess returns with a free event for all the family on Sunday July 13. ChessFest, the popular Trafalgar Square festival which in 2024 attracted more than 20,000 visitors, is back for another year. You and your children and grandchildren can challenge masters and grandmasters, watch a living game with human pieces, solve puzzles, and much more.

There will also be ChessFests in Liverpool, Hull and Portishead.

 Puzzle 2630

David Paravyan vs Saveliy Golubov, St Petersburg 2018. White’s next turn was hailed as the “move of the year”. He was a bishop down and threatened with Bxc2 capturing his queen for nothing, while the optically strong 1 Rb6+ is an illusion because 1 . . . axb6 guards the attacked a4 queen. White’s actual choice was quite different, and really spectacular. Can you spot the brilliancy?

Click here for solution