Description
The Margate 1935 Chessmen
Offered here is a set of the Margate Chessmen, designed to commemorate the chess pieces used in the series of international chess tournaments held at the Margate Chess Club in England from 1935 through 1939. The King stands 4.0″ tall with a 1,7″ diameter base. The pieces are boxwood and Ebony and are heavily weighted. Each piece sits atop a green baize base pad. This is a four-Queen set, a praxis pioneered by The House of Staunton in 1995 to facilitate Pawn Promotion. A unique feature of this set is the addition of a second set of knights of the design often used in chess sets from Margate Chess Club. The chessmen are housed in a light wood veneer hinge top lined and divided box. No chessboard is included with this set of chessmen. However, a suitable chessboard can be found by viewing our extensive collection of new and antique chessboards. Please click here.
Background.
Margate was a seaside resort in England. The 1935 International was a ten-player round-robin event which featured some of the World’s foremost competitors.
Players over the five events included many of the past, current and future chess notables. Competing were World Champions Alexander Alekhine and Jose Capablanca, Samuel Reshevsky and Ruben Fine from the United States, former Women’s World Champion Vera Menchik, Miguel Najdorf, an upcoming master from Poland, and a rising star from Estonia, Grand Master Paul Keres. Keres had emerged as a player of note as a 19-year-old in the 1935 Chess Olympiad and, in the next few years, he became one of the World’s strongest players, winning AVRO 1938. Today he is popularly regarded as the best player never to win the world chess championship.
Other competitors consisted of Jacques Mieses, Philip Stuart Milner-Barry, Brian Patrick Reilly, Edward G Sergeant, and George Alan Thomas.
In the 1935 tournament, Samuel Reshevsky (who was only 23) defeated Capablanca and finish sole first with an impressive score of 7½/9. The victory here was the first of a string of wins for Reshevsky in the 1930s that would herald his rise as one of the World’s top players. Here are the results of those five notable international tournaments in the order they finished.
- Samuel Reshevsky, Jose Capablanca
- Jose Capablanca, Salomon Flohr
- Paul Keres, Ruben Fine, Alexander Alekhine
- Alexander Alekhine, Rudolf Spielman
1939. Paul Keres, Jose Capablanca, Salomon Flohr
