Chessville Reviews - The Official History of the British Correspondence Chess Association 1906-2006 - by D. John Rogers - Reviewed by Rick Kennedy

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The Official History of the
British Correspondence Chess Association
1906-2006
by D. John Rogers

Reviewed by Rick Kennedy

BCCA, 2006 softcover, perfect bound 128 pages

The Official History of the British Correspondence Chess Association 1906-2006 is John Rogers’ look back at the century-old BCCA. It is a new (and improved) version of the history he wrote in 1982, when the organization was “only” 75 years old.

Rogers has used Association publications when possible, back issues of the British Chess Magazine primarily, and other publications when relevant, to assemble this history. It is a tale of people and events, rounded off with eight photographs; a graph of membership size through the years; a list of Presidents, Secretaries, Treasurers, Editors and BCCA Champions; a collection of 19 correspondence games, and an Index.

The games (the first from 1908) are interesting, not only because correspondence games can reach a depth of chess understanding that many over-the-board matches can not, but because each is reproduced in the format (layout, type, notation, etc.) of the magazine it was originally published in, thus retaining some sense of the historical context in which the game was originally played.

In my reading I ran across a number of eye-catchers. For example, while the BCCA was in serious decline due to the disruptions of World War I, it actually thrived during the second World War. Rogers’ explanations are intriguing.

A BCCA feature from the early years on, the Handicap Tourney was an interesting departure:

Thus for a win, a Class 1 player would score 8 points against a Class 1 player, 6 points against Class 2, 4 points against Class 3 and 2 points against Class 4, whilst Class 4 would score 8, 10, 12 and 14 respectively against Classes 4, 3, 2 and 1…. As an incentive to play as many games as possible, 0.2 for each game played is added to the player’s average points, and cash prizes are awarded to the four players with the highest resulting average…

Who knew that in 1935 there was a 1,000-board correspondence match between Great Britain and the United States?

In 1949 the BCCA sponsored some over-the-board events for its members “to kill the idea that the average correspondence player is a ‘sitting target’ in O.T.B. play” among other, mostly social, reasons.

In 1952 the BCCA introduced the Displacement Chess Tourney – “a type of Selected Opening Tourney in which the starting positions of the back row pieces were re-arranged” – but it never caught on. [Editor: sounds a lot like FischerRandom Chess, doesn't it?]

Of course, with the rise of the Internet has come the more speedy use of email (vs. snail mail) and the availability of “Webserver tournaments.”

The Official History of the British Correspondence Chess Association 1906-2006 is intended primarily for BCCA members (home page: http://www.bcca.info) — in fact it is available at no charge to them. Those with an interest in this branch of chess history, or those quite taken by correspondence chess, might find it of interest, as well.

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