The present Scarborough weekend congresses is one of the largest in the “North”, second only to Blackpool, which has a tradition for such things dating back to the start of the last century, when the NCCU Congress was held there. The present series of Scarborough congresses started in 1977, roughly 50 years after what was in many ways a much more impressive series of week-long Scarborough Whit Congresses which ran from 1925 to 1929, with the participation of various notable foreigners, including a certain Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine, justifying the epithet “International”, and making it something of a mini-Hastings.

The enterprising organiser was the then secretary of Scarborough Chess Club, one Gerald Mutrie Reid. His middle name was the maiden name of his mother, who was born in British Honduras. He had got off to a difficult start in life, as his father, Vernon Botterill Reid, shot himself to find out if there was an afterlife; that was just before Gerald’s 13th birthday, poor lad.

Gerald himself stepped in to make up numbers in the 1926 Premier tournament. (Arrangements that year were severely hampered by a general strike which ran from 04/05/1926 to 13/05/1926.) This gave him the chance to play against Alekhine, roughly a year before the latter was to become World Champion. (No prizes for guessing the result.) Gerald lost all but one of his games, but his one win, against Climenson Yelverton Charles Dawbarn, was good fun. See below for both the Alekhine game and the Dawbarn game.

Scarborough council had provided some financial support at first, but after 1927 that support was withdrawn, and it may have been his continuing to run the event in 1928 and 1929 which led, at least in part, to Gerald in time filing his own bankruptcy on 02/01/1934.

In the event, the British Championship Congress of 1930 was held in Scarborough, in a way replacing the Whit Congress, but the Whit series was not resumed thereafter.

Click here for an overview of the series of Scarborough Whit Congresses.

Click here for details of the 1925 Scarborough Congress.

Click here for details of the 1926 Scarborough Congress.

Click here for details of the 1927 Scarborough Congress.

Click here for details of the 1928 Scarborough Congress.

Click here for details of the 1929 Scarborough Congress.

Click here to play through the game G M Reid v Alexander A Alekhine.

Click here to play through the game G M Reid v Climenson Y C Dawbarn.

Click here for more biographical info on Gerald Mutrie Reid.