James Neill

Chess lovers in Ulster are poorer today by the decease of Mr. James Neill, one of our oldest and best chess players. For many years he was the ruling spirit of the Belfast Chess Club, and at a time when chess was less played than it is now, he did more than any other player to keep the game alive in Belfast. The members in recognition of this fact, and to mark the esteem in which he was held, unanimously elected him president of the club, the premier organisation in Ireland. The position he held to the very last, although he had ceased to particiapate actively in the proceedings. He had been a member of the Salvio Club also, during its existence. In the chess tourney, held in the Queen's College, Belfast, during the autumn of 1886, Mr. Neill took part in the masters's tourney and came out of the contest with honour to himself, and credit to the club of which he was a representative. He never took to what is called modern chess (i.e. the style of Steinitz and Lasker) very much preferring the more rapid, and perhaps more brilliant methods of an older school. The brilliancy of such a player as Tchigorin constituted his ideal while the very slow and cautious play of some of the younger of our own men, every move being a painful endeavour to gain some little ultimate advantage, sadly tried his patience. The King's Gambit was probably his favourite game, but he had a good knowledge of all the openings. He had given up attending club meetings for several years, only playing an occasional game with some friend who might call to see him. His death severs the principal link connecting the earlier times of Belfast chess, the times of McDonnell and Burden, with the present. In his prime he was a player of a very high order, and if a match had been possible between him, as he then was, and the very strongest of our Irish players today, it is very probable that victory would have rested with him.