About this database:

These games have been input from the bulletin 'The Centymca Story' by Jimmy Adams, published in 1976, supplemented by a handful of relevant games I have sourced from elsewhere. I have input them without notes. I imagine the bulletin is hard to come by (I borrowed a copy owned by Richard James and am grateful to him for the loan) but is well worth seeking out as it was excellently assembled by a team of Centymca players, headed by Jimmy Adams and Mike Wills, with some particularly fine annotations by Jimmy Adams. It marks a remarkably vibrant time in the development of chess in England, with star name players coming to the UK for the (then) well-sponsored Hastings Congress, and subsequently invited to give simuls and play rapidplay events in London afterwards. In addition, there were a number of other chess initiatives springing up in the capital, in which London Central YMCA players and organisers played a significant part. As did the likes of Leonard Barden and Bob Wade, of course, in their key role of matchmaking super-GMs to ambitious juniors.

Amongst other things, the database contains...

28 games played in a ten-player, 15-minute rapidplay event held at the Centymca club on 22 January 1976. Results: 1-2 David Bronstein, Mark Taimanov 8/9, 3-4 David Goodman, Jimmy Adams 6, 5 Gerald Bennett 5, 6 Andrew Martin 4, 7 Mike Brown 3, 8-9 Nicholas Benjamin, Julian Hodgson 2½, 10 Simon Brown 0. It is quite remarkable that so many games played at such a fast limit should have been preserved for posterity, and for this we have to thank a team of enthusiasts at the club who were deputed to scribble the games down, namely Ray Cannon, Stuart Fancy, Richard Lobo, Sandys Dickinson, Howard Tebbs, George Hodgson, David Brown and others. Sponsorship was by the London Chess Club, London Chess Congress and the Slater Foundation.

8 games of a simul given by Viktor Korchnoi on 17 January 1976 against 'Young England' at the Starcross School, Islington. Korchnoi scored +20, =9, -1. The loss was to Nigel Short.

22 games of a simul given by Viktor Korchnoi on 18 January 1976 against Centymca. Overall result: Korchnoi +26, =4, -0. Other results: wins against Simon Spivack, Sean Feakes, John Yeo, Cliff Collier, Andrew Martin and Maria Sviatapolk-Mirski.

18 games of a simul given by Rafael Vaganian in January 1975 at Centymca. I don't have the date or result of this simul. Some of the games here are from BCM rather than the Adams bulletin.

Several other simul games in displays given by Korchnoi, Bronstein and Jansa on 17 January 1976, including the game in which the 10-year-old Nigel Short beat Korchnoi. Again, I have supplemented the games with those found in BCM and elsewhere. These junior-only simuls were held after the London Junior Championship prizegiving at Starcross School, Islington, London, 17 January 1976. Two other simuls were held at the same time: Cenek Kottnauer scored +26, =1, -0 (drew with David Connolly), while Dinah Wright (now Dinah Norman) scored +14, =5, -1 (loss to Neil Carr).

1976 Post-Hastings Simuls

Viktor Korchnoi		P	W	D	L	Draws	Losses
17 Jan 1976	London	30	20	9	1	H Macpherson (Cambridge), J Burke (Acton), C Plasa (Kingston), S Knott (Hammersmith), G Lawton (Leicester), C Sonabend (Liverpool), W Watson (Barnes), C Frostick (Orpington), A Gregory (Watford),	Nigel Short (Atherton)
18 Jan 1976	London	30	26	4	0	M Read, G Szaszvari, M Wills, T Welsh	-
19 Jan 1976	Swindon	30	28	2	0	Claud Sowden, Bill Lowe	-
20 Jan 1976	Norwich	35	33	1	1	Chris Holmes	Doug Miller (UEA, grade 103)
21 Jan 1976	Luton	32	30	1	1
22 Jan 1976	Chester	25	22	1	2	John Gorman	Paul Townsend, Harry Bullard
23 Jan 1976	Ilford	30	27	2	1
David Bronstein		P	W	D	L	Draws	Losses
17 Jan 1976	London	30	17	9	4	C Crouch (Harrow), Jon C Benjamin (Richmond), S Fancy (Eltham), Debbie Evans (Kenilworth), P Sowray (Chiswick), S Spivack (Maida Vale), Daniel King (Bromley), P Sullivan (Sutton), S Goodwin (Highbury)	M Coogan (W14), R Haldane (Earlsfield), M Hebden (Leicester), Tony Williams (Guildford)
18 Jan 1976	London	21	17	2	2		Julian Hodgson, N Anthony Perkins
21 Jan 1976	Oxford	20	19	1	0
23 Jan 1976	London Clock Simul	12	9	3	0		(n.b. Hodgson lost to Bronstein this time)
Mark Taimanov		P	W	D	L	Draws	Losses
17 Jan 1976	London	30	28	1	1
18 Jan 1976	Hereford	25	25	0	0
19 Jan 1976	Knotty Ash	26	18	5	3
Vlastimil Hort		P	W	D	L	Draws	Losses
17 Jan 1976	Birmingham	20	16	3	1
18 Jan 1976	Teeside	30	26	3	1
19 Jan 1976	Leeds	42	32	7	3
Vlastimil Jansa		P	W	D	L	Draws	Losses
17 Jan 1976	London	28	25	3	0	Andrew King (Bromley), John Hockaday (Harrow), A Stolow (Finchley)	-

Note: If anyone has any further games from these simuls, I would be happy to include them in this file.

Sources of info: Evening Standard, 19 January 1976 (report by Leonard Barden); BCM, March 1976, p110

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File Updated

Date	Notes
9 October 2015	First upload. These games have been input from the bulletin The Centymca Story by Jimmy Adams, published in 1976, which I have supplemented with a few more relevant games sourced from elsewhere. Games input without notes for the most part.
3 May 2016	Updated to include the game Korchnoi 0-1 Peter Montgomery (in only 13 moves) from the Luton Chess Club simul of 21 January 1976, from an undated press cutting of a BH Wood column (Daily Telegraph?). My thanks to Mark McCready. Mark also supplied a press cutting from a Luton newspaper dated 2 Feb 1978 with details of a simul given by Vlastimil Hort, presumably after Hastings in January 1978, in which he took on 39 opponents at Luton Chess Club, scoring +34, =4 (S Thomas, Colin Garwood, P Tessaromatis, N Graham), -1 (Ian Hill-Smith).
18 June 2026	Given a make-over to iron out a few minor errors, standardise names and place the games in chronological order. One game added: 176 in total.
21 June	Added five more games from the Korchnoi simul vs Young England, 17 January 1976, which were published in CHESS Magazine, June 2009: (1) VK wins vs D Cummings, N Davies, J Hodgson, M Pein and R M Webb (the games vs Plasa, Short and Watson were already included).