THE BRITISH CHAMPIONSHIP One of the difficulties of our annual
British championship is that every other year it overlaps with the International Team Tournament, so that it is held with six of the leading players absent and any victory is necessarily rather a hollow one. I would rate this year's champion- ship at Blackpool as a good one for an 'off year,' but, of course, not equal in strength to last year's when there was no team tournament.
For the last four rounds it was fairly clear that Alexander or Parr would win, and Parr may well feel rather aggrieved at not getting the title; his score of 9/11 is half a point more than is normally needed, and Alexander had two lucky breaks—against Friedman and against May. On the other hand, Alexander had on the whole to meet rather stronger opposition and had the slight extra strain of being in the lead most of the time. On balance, I think that a tie would have been the fairest result.
Wood and Haygarth shared third place with 7i, and Burden was fifth with 7, and these three played appreciably better than anyone else. Wood, the only player to beat Parr, played with great determination throughout and might well have scored still more; Haygarth, still only twenty-one, showed excellent positional judg- ment and plenty of tenacity and should improve further; he has a good temperament, and my only criticism is that I would like to see a' little more fire in his game. Burden played better in the second week than the first—he won an excellent game against Wood—but did not do quite as well as expected; too often, curiously enough, he failed to make anything of the opening.
The younger players as a whole did quite well, but not quite well enough; with the excep- tion of the erratic but imaginative Horseman, I think they are rather too conservative in style. Good judgment, endgame skill, technique can all be acquired later on, but only when young can imaginative power be developed—and to develop this one should play openings (prefer- ably a number of them) which lead to critical and complex positions; this may not produce the best immediate results, but in the long run I believe that it produces both better and more interesting players.
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