They were referring to Henry Ernest Atkins (August 29, 1872 – January 31, 1955) who is best known for his record of winning the British Championship nine times in eleven tries. He won all but his first and last attempts and won every year from 1905 to 1911, and again in 1924 and 1925.
Atkins was a schoolmaster and treated chess as a hobby, hardly studying it at all and playing in only a handful of international tournaments. He was an extremely gifted player who would likely have become one of the world's leading players had he pursued the game more single-mindedly.
Due to his profession and the fact that he looked at chess as only a hobby, he often ignored the game for years at a time. He played a handful of tournaments/matches from 1895 to 1914 and then stopped all chess activities until 1920.
Between 1895 and 1901, Atkins played in seven minor tournaments, winning four and finishing second or equal second in the others, and losing just 3 out of 70 games. At Amsterdam 1899, an amateur tournament that was his first international appearance, he achieved a perfect score, winning all 15 games and finishing 4 points ahead of the second-place finisher.
Atkins' best-ever result came at his first major international tournament, Hanover 1902 where finished third with +8 -2 =7 behind David Janowsky and Harry N. Pillsbury, but ahead of Mikhail Chigorin and Frank Marshall.
After the 1911 British Championship, Atkins retired from tournament chess for the next 11 years. He later remarked, "I really can't say why I didn't play after 1911 for so many years."
He had agreed to play in the 1919 Hastings Victory Congress, but withdrew at the last moment "by doctor's orders.” He played a bit in 1920 to 1922, and then quit again until 1927, when he played in the London Olympiad. And then he quit again until 1935, when he played in the Warsaw Olympiad at the age of 63.
In 1922, a major international tournament was organized in London, the first in almost a quarter of a century; many of the world's leading players agreed to compete. Despite his long layoff from the game, Atkins was invited, and agreed to play. Not surprisingly, after such a long hiatus, he had a disappointing tournament, scoring only 6.0-9.0 and finishing 10th out of 16 players. He finished outside the prize list, for the first and only time in his career.
However, he did have the consolation of claiming among his victims Rubinstein and Savielly Tartakower.
At some point he made a deep study of the games of Steinitz and modeled his play so closely after Steinitz that he became known in Europe as "der kleine Steinitz.” However, IM Jeremy Silman said he played over a hundred of Atkins games and while there were some good positional games, he also saw a lot of “tactical crushes and quite a bit of chaos” and “crazy fight(s).”
Born in Leicester, Atkins learned chess from one of his brothers and joined the school chess club at age 10. One of his sisters gave him a copy of Howard Staunton's book The Chess-Player's Handbook, which he closely studied. At 15, he joined the Leicester Chess Club and within two years was playing on first board.
While in college, he also played on first board for Cambridge University. In four years playing for Cambridge he only lost one match game. In 1890, he went to Peterhouse, Cambridge as a mathematical scholar.
He was mathematical master at Northampton College from 1898 to 1902 and at the Wyggeston School from 1902 and 1909. He was then appointed principal of what later became Huddersfield New College in 1909, serving in that position until 1936.
An unobtrusive man, he was last seen as a spectator at Nottingham, 1936 wandering about as if he was nobody. Atkins died on January 31, 1955 in Huddersfield, England.
In December 1921 the British Chess Federation decided to hold an international tournament of sixteen players as the main event of its 1922 congress. Borislav Kostic and Frank Marshall were invited, but had problems with traveling expenses and were unable to accept.
The tournament ran from July 31 to August 19, 1922. Many games played in this tourney would later find their was into the best games collections of a number of players.
London 1922 Final Standings
1) Capablanca 13.0
2) Alekhine 11.5
3) Vidmar 11.0
4) Rubinstein 10.5
5) Bogoljubow 9.0
6-7) Reti and Tartakover 8.5
8-9) Maroczy and Yates 8.0
10) Atkins 6.0
11) Euwe 5.5
12-13) Znosko-Borovsky and Wahltuch 5.0
14-15) Morrison and Watson 4.5
16) Marotti 1.5
As mentioned, London 1922 was a disaster for Atkins, but the way in which he took down Rubinstein was described best by Tartakower: The feature of this game is white's skillful conduct of the attack, which, times hanging by a thread and kept up by problem-like maneuvers, succeeds in the face of many dangers.
It's extremely hard to gauge the actual strength of someone who played as seldom as Atkins, but Chessmetrics gives it their best effort. According to that site, Atkins was number 6 in the world on their rating list in 1903.
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