Hello Nophig, Probably there was a previous Chess tournament taking place then because the tournaments were rare those days the next one in 1928 took a long time to take place since the previous one. It didn't happen right after it , it didn't happen after a short period of time, but took quite long to occur.

the meaning for "it took a while to occur" means that something has taken a while or alot of time to happen

Can also be phrased as 'ít took a while to eventuate'