The first Lloyds Bank event was a pilot, a London v New York City telex match, to celebrate the United States bicentennial, in which the American captain agreed to Barden's proposal to include extra under-11 boards, on one of which Short (who lived near Manchester) beat the future US champion Joel Benjamin. By then many juniors were advancing towards master strength, but lacked official FIDE international ratings and titles. So in 1977 the annual Lloyds Bank Masters in London was launched, modelled on a successful US event at Lone Pine where the best US juniors competed against grandmasters. This legendary Open lasted until 1994 (18th edition, won by Alexander Morozevich). Barden also organised an all-play-all tournament, the Lord John Cup in London, where three young and promising English masters — John Nunn, Michael Stean and Jonathan Mestel — met reputed international grandmasters as Vlastimil Hort who won this one-off event, Miguel Quinteros, the first winner of the Lloyds Bank Open and joint runner-up at the Lord John Cup, Eugenio Torre, or legendary Alexander Kotov.