We believe Kingston Chess Club, in its first incarnation at least, was founded in 1875. Here is a game played in that year. Blackburne was the greatest English player of the time, and he annotated the game in a manner which shows the level of chess understanding was already very high 150 years ago.

Click on a move to see the corresponding position.

Simultaneous game played to mark the centenary of Kingston Chess Club in 1975

Bill Waterton (subsequently club president) and Bill Booth (the then current president) were club stalwarts. They both managed to draw with the master Leonard Barden when he came to give a simultaneous display. The prize was a signed book.

Bill Booth recalled the exhibition fondly¹.

It wasn’t scintillating chess, and it wasn’t a victory, but I did once draw a game with Leonard Barden, still chess correspondent for the London ‘Evening Standard’.

It was in a simultaneous match at Kingston Chess Club in 1975 when he was playing 16 others as well as me. Not a big deal, but I did gain some satisfaction from not being beaten by the former British champion and member of the Olympic team.

1. Archived copy of the Kingston Chess Club website. ↩︎

Simultaneous game played to mark the centenary of Kingston Chess Club in 1975

The game was originally published on an older version of the Kingston website and was from there included in the BritBase collection of Leonard Barden’s games.