DTFC Sir Arthur Conan Doyle B-Day Tournament

This is a "No Vacation" tournament!

THREE DAYS WILL BE 2 ROUNDS AND THE FINAL BETWEEN THE BEST EIGHT PLAYERS.

May 22 is celebrated as International Sherlock Holmes Day. This date was chosen as it is the birthday of the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. Some of the stories include The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Sign of the Four. 🕵️‍♂️

Conan Doyle is most famous as the inventor of Sherlock Holmes, but he had a varied career as a writer, journalist, and public figure.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh into a prosperous Irish family. He trained as a doctor, gaining his degree from Edinburgh University in 1881. He worked as a surgeon on a whaling boat and a medical officer on a steamer traveling between Liverpool and West Africa. He then settled in Portsmouth on the English south coast and divided his time between medicine and writing.

Sherlock Holmes first appeared in 'A Study of Scarlet', published in 'Beeton's Christmas Annual' in 1887. Its success encouraged Conan Doyle to write more stories involving Holmes but, in 1893, Conan Doyle killed off Holmes, hoping to concentrate on more serious writing. A public outcry later made him resurrect Holmes. In addition, Conan Doyle wrote several other novels, including 'The Lost World' and various non-fictional works. These included a pamphlet justifying Britain's involvement in the Boer War, for which he was knighted, and histories of the Boer War and World War One, in which his son, brother, and two of his nephews were killed. Conan Doyle also twice ran unsuccessfully for parliament. In later life, he became very interested in spiritualism.

Conan Doyle died of a heart attack on 7 July 1930.

You can check the excellent Chess and Sherlock Holmes

By Edward Winter

https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/holmes.html

During his youth, Arthur Conan Doyle won a chess tournament organized by the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

In the story “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman,” published in the December 18, 1926 issue of Liberty magazine and the January 1927 issue of Strand Magazine by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the character Amberley excelled at chess (Sherlock Holmes saying “Amberley excelled at chess – one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind”). Another line was, “It would appear that Amberley has one hobby in life, and it is chess. Not far from him at Lewisham there lives a young doctor who is also a chess-player.”

 In all of Doyle’s 4 novels and 56 short stories, neither Sherlock Holmes nor Dr. Watson ever played a game of chess (or checkers), or even speak about being a chess player. But that doesn’t stop the movies or TV shows.

 In 1980, Raymond Smullyan wrote The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes: 50 Tantalizing Problems of Chess Detection. All the problems involve retrograde analysis.