Winter Butterfly  -  19h    23/04/03 

Dear Friends 

Firstly I would like to thank Kevin Staveley and Wilf Arnold for ensuring that the results of the Welsh Championship were forwarded to me on a daily basis, thus enabling me to provide readers with coverage of the event.

 Secondly, please see Kevin Staveley's reply (below) to my question regarding players who have recorded a hat trick of Welsh Championship wins:

 Dai,

 Having the Championship trophy in front of me I decided to check on people who retained the title.

 Pat Bennett 1960 and 61

M.Gavrilovic 1969 and 70

Howard Williams 1971 and 72;  74 and 75;  77 and 78;  80, 81 and 82 and 83 (4 consecutive years!!)  THEN  86, 87 and 88); 93 and 94

John Cooper  1984 and 85 - ;then  92, 93 and 94 and 95 (4 consecutive years!!) 

Paul Lamford  1988 and 89

David Cummings  1997, 98 and 99

Richard Jones  2002 - 03

 There were ties in 57, 61, 62, 68, 70, 73, 76, 78, 79, 83, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94, 99

 This means that NO PLAYER HAS BEEN OUTRIGHT WELSH CHAMPION FOR THREE CONSECUTIVE YEARS - AN INTERESTING FACT?

 Kev. 

Many thanks Kevin.

So, including Richard, only seven players have managed to record successive wins.  Only three people have recorded a hat-trick of wins,  David Cummings, John Cooper and Howard Williams (twice).  The record for successive wins is held by Howard and John with four.

 I'm not sure if Kevin still has the information to hand, but I wonder if there was a tie in one of the years 1980-1982?  If not then Howard Williams does appear to have won the championship outright in three successive years.

 I'll start sending out copies of the results in all sections, as soon as I have finished processing them.  There's over a megabyte of information so I need to be selective and change the format so that it is a reasonable size when it arrives in your mailboxes.  Sorry for the delay. but I'll deal with it as quickly as possible.

 Best wishes

Dai James.