Chess Journal, 1871 (1st Tourney)

The title of the journal is given as Chess Journal on the first page of the individual issues, and as Dubuque Chess Journal on volume title pages.

Announcement was repeated on the inside front cover of at least issues 12 and 13. Minor changes appeared on different dates, but no special attention seem to have been drawn to them. Later, the tourney book reports the 1870-12-31 announcement to have said that closing date was third Friday in May next.

The announcement of the 2nd Tourney (see above, p. 169) mentions A bound copy of our Tourney No. one as prize or part of a prize.

In the May issue (p. 129) the closing date is changed to be 20 May 1871, instead of 26 May as mentioned earlier, so that the awards could be ready to be printed in the June issue.

Volume 2 of Chess Journal prints 82 tourney problems.

The report presumably appeared in v. 3 of Chess Journal. As no copy of this volume has been located, the information about awards and problems rely on the tourney book and S. Loyd's description of the tourney in Scientific American Supplement.

The #4 1 pr. is probably due to the rule that a composer could only win one prize. In the tourney book, four-movers by G. Carpenter appear as problem 1 (best problem), 2 and 4, after which L. W. Davis’ problem appears as nr 9.


The tourney book does not have a title of its own: the title in brackets is the one used by Betts (Betts 32-8). It is usually catalogued by the title of its first part/section, as cited above.

The first part of the tourney book only contains 44 problems (without mottos), in the order decided by the judges (as stated on p. 48). The problems are not direct mates only: there are also self-mates, conditionals, retractors and at least one end-game (which actually is a #3, judging by its solution). It also adds the information problems 6 and 40 were suspected of being defective, and that further information would be found either in the Chess Journal or in the Book of the Tourney No. Two. No related information has been found in the tourney book for the 2nd tourney.

Loyd's note in the Scientific American Supplement that the seventh prize was not awarded must be interpreted in the context of his article, where the seventh prize mentioned would have been the second #4 prize. In the context of the tourney, the seventh prize was for for the second best #2 problem (see announcement).

The judges report has not been seen. Locate v3 to ensure details are correct. Solutions are said to be in issue 18.