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Northern Counties Chess Union Established 1899 A constituent unit of the English Chess Federation |
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Individual Championships |
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Individual
The first NCCU individual championship concluded on 18/05/1901. It had been run as a knock-out and was won by Rhodes Marriott of Sale, Cheshire. The prize was 4 guineas, but there was as yet no trophy.
From 1902 there were annual NCCU Congresses which were limited to NCCU participants (except in 1914) until 1923; they were held in the early years at Park House, Claremont Park, Blackpool, later Manchester. The 1902 congress was not clearly billed as for the NCCU individual championship, though it must have been. Thereafter, to 1921 (except 1914), the congress was specifically for the NCCU individual championship. There were First Class and Second Class sections, and from 1903 the winner of the First Class section was awarded the title NCCU Champion, but initially there was no trophy. However, there were money prizes which were in multiples of a guinea rather than the pound. The initial series of congresses was ended by the outbreak of war. There was a congress in 1914 but it was not for the NCCU championship and was thrown open to non-NCCU participants. The championship congress was resumed in 1921. There was no 1922 congress, due probably to two international events in England that year. When the congress was resumed in 1923 it was thrown open to all comers, and the NCCU Championship as such presumably ceased to be conducted this way through a dedicated closed congress. (Perhaps a championship was run in 1923 using a different system which continued thereafter.
1908 saw the introduction of the “Dr. Wahltuch Championship Trophy” for the NCCU Championship, though the trophy was not “back-engraved” with earlier winners of the championship. For 1909, the NCCU Council felt that in view of the fact that the British Congress fell in their territory in the summer, they should reserve their energies in the ways of finance and obtaining competitors for the major event. Thus there was no NCCU Individual Championship held that year, though an less formal NCCU event was held in Manchester, looking for all the world like an NCCU Championship with Wahltuch and Yates tying for 1st place (the latter beating the former but conceding two draws).
The format of an NCCU championship immediately after 1921 is unclear. In 1932-33 there were three contestants for the right to challenge the holder, Victor Leonard Wahltuch for the title of NCCU Individual Champion. The contestants were Harry Woodhouse Hodgkinson (Bradford), “F Eva (Cheshire)” who was probably Arthur Eva rather than Alfred Eva, and Reginald Joseph Broadbent (Lancashire - at the time), and Broadbent won. There then should have been a match between Broadbent and Wahltuch, but the latter resigned without play due to having gone to live down South. The Wahltuch Trophy apparently bears no inscription for 1923 to 1932. Nevertheless, Wahltuch was evidently deemed “holder” at the start of the 1932-33 competition, so either there had been events held in seasons prior to 1932-33, or maybe he was deemed “holder” due the event perhaps not having been held for up to ten years and he had been the last holder. Anyway, it seems engraving of the trophy resumed in earnest from 1933 onwards, but leaving the period 1922-23 to 1931-32 a bit of a mystery.
Thereon, the competition seemed to involve players making their own arrangements for playing their games, round by round, over a somewhat protracted period. However, by the middish 1900s, the championship had become embedded in county matches. Each county nominated its entrant for the championship, and in county matches the players concerned were paired against each other so that their game served for two competitions, that game being placed at board 1 or board 2 so the colours for the individual contest matched those of the match.
Later still, the contest was embedded in a relatively randomly selected congress, with a rota whereby each county in turn got to nominate a congress. (See here for a list of recent hosting congresses.) This was certainly the case by 1988, when the hosting congress was the 9th Redcar Congress held from 27th to 29th of January at the Redcar Bowl, Majuba Road, Redcar. Given that Redcar was in Cleveland, which is the second county in alphabetic order, then perhaps the system started in Cheshire (Frodsham?) in 1987 - as Cheshire & NW stand first in the alphabetic queue.
Boys’/Junior Championship
A competition for boys for a trophy commemorating Edmund Spencer was first mooted in 1937, but took years to actually materialise. (See Edmund Spencer Memorial Cup.) Besides securing a season’s tenure of the Spencer Memorial Trophy, these days the winner also has his entry to an appropriate British Championship paid for by the N.C.C.U., subject to the option being taken up.
In 1952, an annual Liverpool Junior Chess Congress was instigated. The 1958 congress hosted the NCCU Individual Junior Championship (at which time the NCCU Junior organiser was J R Nicolson of Liverpool). It may be that the Liverpool Junior Congress had hosted the NCCU Junior Championship since its commencement in 1954 (but maybe not). It is now hosted by a congress as above.
Seniors’ Championship
This was first contested in 2014, and the John Littlewood NCCU Seniors’ Trophy is awarded to the winner.
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