The Four Nations Chess League is the three-level event and the only all-national chess team championship held in United Kingdom. Established in 1993, it soon became major event in the UK, attracting top British players as well as dozens of European leading grandmasters. Although nominally all-British, the 4NCL is predominantly English, with participation of few Welsh teams. Scotland and N.Ireland have their own (relatively weak) championships.

The 4NCL gained huge popularity in early 2000s and quickly became one of major chess leagues in Europe. Sadly, due to unstable financial conditions and inadequate funding, the league is not as strong as it could be. 4NCL Champions had problems reaching top positions in the European Club Cup, peaking at 20th in 2003 and 2012.

4NCL featured many top players, including Korchnoi, Shirov, Morozevich, Wojtaszek, Gurevich, Tiviakov, Cramling, Lautier (frankly some of these played very few games) and a bunch of domestic stars: Adams, Nunn, Short, Miles and the likes.

Matches in Division 1 are played on 8 boards and there has to be a woman in the line-up. 16 teams are divided onto two groups of 8, with top 4 from each group forming the Championship Pool. Bottom four from the Relegation Poll are relegated to Division 2. The league is usually played over five weekends, from October until May.

It took a lot of time and cost a lot of effort, but we made it possible to recover every detail from all 20 editions and the full history is now available at one mouse click. Please note that most games from seasons 1994-95 and 1995-96 are not available.

Some 4NCL Division 1 trivia:
All 20 seasons in 4NCL Div/1 - IM Andy Ledger
Most points scored - GM Johny Emms (118)
Most games played - IM Simon Ansell (194)
Most game wins - GM Mark Hebden (87)
Most games drawn - GM John Parker (85)
Least games lost - GM Michael Adams (2/59)
Best percentage (min.30 games) - GM Adams (85.6)
Most 4NCL titles - GM Mark Hebden (11)
Every time on 4NCL podium - GM Glenn Flear (16 times)

4NCL Website - http://www.4ncl.co.uk

4NCL summary 1993-2013 (link: http://www.olimpbase.org/leagueUK/4ncl.html)

4NCL all-time statistics