Birthday of IM Andrew Greet (05-x-1979)
2020-10-05
IM Andrew Greet
BCN wishes IM Andrew Greet best wishes on his birthday.
Andrew Nicholas Greet was born on Friday, October 5th, 1979 in the cathedral city of Truro, Cornwall and has resided in St. Austell, Cornwall. “Message in a Bottle” by The Police held the number one spot in the UK singles chart (three weeks in total).
Andrew attended Truro School leaving in 1998.
Andrew became a FIDE Master in 2004 and an International Master in 2005. His peak rating (according to Felice and Megabase 2020) was 2456 in April 2016 at the age of 37.
Andrew was British Under-18 Champion in 1996 at the age of 16 sharing the title with Oliver Rosten & Rohan Churm. In 1998 Andrew won the title outright.
From 1998 – 2001 had a break from chess to study Psychology at The University of Kent in Canterbury.
In 2005 he scored a record breaking 11/11 in the Four Nations League playing for Hillsmark Kingfisher. By now, Andrew had moved to Glasgow and had changed his FIDE federation from England to Scotland.
Andrew was joint winner (with Simon Knott) of the Southend Open in 2006.
In April 2009 Andrew joined Quality Chess in Sales and Marketing which led to the position of editor.
In 2010 Andrew became Scottish Champion outright.
In 2017 won outright the Dundee grandmaster tournament : here is the story of the tournament.
In 2018 he played board one for Scotland in the 43rd Olympiad in Batumi.
Andrew is a successful martial artist specialising in a a discipline known as Brazilian Jiujitsu, which is a form of grappling.
Here is an article (by Dave Regis) concerning a simultaneous display at Exeter Chess Club in 2010
From britishchess.co.uk :
“He has a very friendly personality which works well when coaching, and he has coached England juniors on foreign trips.”

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Andrew has written a number of publications as follows :
Play the Ruy Lopez, Andrew Greet, Everyman, 2007
Dangerous Weapons 1.e4 e5, Andrew Greet, John Emms & Glenn Flear, Everyman, 2008
Starting Out : The Accelerated Dragon, Andrew Greet, Everyman, 2008
Beating Unusual Chess Defences to 1.e4, Andrew Greet, Everyman, 2011
Play the Queen’s Indian, Everyman, Andrew Greet
IM Andrew Greet
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Death Anniversary of GM Dr. Jonathan Penrose OBE (07-x-1933 30-xi-2021)
2020-10-07
BCN remembers GM Dr. Jonathan Penrose OBE who passed away on Tuesday, November 30th 2021.
In the 1971 New Years Honours List Jonathan was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) The citation read “For services to Chess.”
From British Chess (Pergamon Press, 1983) by Botterill, Levy, Rice and Richardson : (article by George Botterill)
“Penrose is one of the outstanding figures of British chess. Yet many who meet him may not realize this just because he is one of the quietest and most modest of men. Throughout the late 1950s and the whole of the 1960s he stood head and shoulders above any of his contemporaries.
See caption below
Press agency caption for photograph above
His extraordinary dominance is revealed by the fact that he won the British championship no less than ten times (1958-63 and 1966-69, inclusive), a record that nobody is likely to equal in the future.
At his best his play was lucid, positionally correct, energetic and tactically acute. None the less, there is a ‘Penrose problem’: was he a ‘Good Thing’for British chess? The trouble was that whilst this highly talented player eff0ectively crushed any opposition at
home, he showed little initiative in flying the flag abroad. There is a wide-spread and justifiable conviction that only lack of ambition in the sphere of international chess can explain why he did not secure the GM title during his active over-the-board playing career.
See caption below
Press agency caption for above photograph
It would be unjust, however, to blame Penrose for any of this. The truth is simply that he was not a professional chessplayer, and indeed he flourished in
a period in which chess playing was not a viable profession in Britain. But even if the material awards available had been greater Penrose would almost certainly have chosen to remain an amateur. For he was cast in that special intellectual and ethical tradition of great British amateurs like H. E. Atkins, Sir George Thomas and Hugh Alexander before him.
Travel Chess2nd January 1951: British chess champions Jonathan Penrose and Leonard Barden ponder over a portable travel game in a restaurant. (Photo by Walter Bellamy/Express/Getty Images)
His family background indicates early academic inclinations in a cultural atmosphere in which chess was merely a game something at which one excelled through sheer ability, but not to be ranked alongside truly serious work. It is noteworthy that Penrose, unique in this respect amongst British chess
masters, has never written at any length about the game. He has had other matters to concentrate on when away from the board, being a lecturer in psychology. (His father, Professor L. S. Penrose, was a distinguished geneticist.)
IM Dr. Jonathan Penrose OBE
Being of slight physique and the mildest and most amiable of characters, it is probably also true that Penrose lacked the toughness and ‘killer instinct’
required to reach the very top. Nervous tension finally struck him down in a dramatic way when he collapsed during play in the Siegen Olympiad of 1970. We
can take that date as the end of the Penrose era.
Jonathan PenroseChess Grandmaster Jonathan Penrose pictured during a chess match, circa 1960. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images))
Since, then though he has not by any means entirely given up, his involvement in the nerve-wracking competitions of over-the-board play has been greatly reduced. instead he has turned to correspondence chess, which is perhaps the ideal medium for his clear strategy and deep and subtle analysis. So Penrose’s career it not over. He has moved to another, less stressful province of the kingdom of chess.
IM Dr. Jonathan Penrose OBE
For the first game, however, we shall turn the clock right back to 1950 and the see the Penrose in the role of youthful giant killer.

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From The Encyclopedia of Chess (BT Batsford, 1977) by Harry Golombek :
“British international master and ten times British Champion, Penrose was born in Colchester and came from a chess-playing family.
Lionel Sharples Penrose, FRS (11 June 1898 – 12 May 1972)
His father and mother both played chess and his father, Professor Lionel Sharples Penrose, in addition or being a geneticist of world-wide fame, was a strong chess-player and a good endgame composer. Jonathan’s older brother Oliver, was also a fine player.
Oliver Penrose FRS FRSE (born 6 June 1929) is a British theoretical physicist
Roger Penrose won the Nobel prize for physics in 2020.
Roger Penrose. Nobel Laureate
Jonathan learnt chess at the age of four, won the British Boys championship at thirteen and by the time he was fifteen was playing in the British Championship in Felixstowe in 1949.
Press agency caption for photograph above
Press agency caption for photograph above
A little reluctant to participate in international tournaments abroad, he did best in the British Championship which he won a record number of times, once more than HE Atkins. He won the title consecutively from 1958 to 1963 and again from 1966 to 1969.
Boy Chess Champion. New York Times photo shows 14 year old J. Penrose 14 year old by chess champion of Britain, in play at the British Chess Championships at Bishopsgate Institute today. He has had great success in the tournament so far, beating men far above his age and experience. 2nd September 1948. Photograph by Reginald Webster
Press agency caption for photograph above
He also played with great effect in nine Olympiads. Playing on a high board for practically all the time, he showed himself the equal of the best grandmasters and indeed, at the Leipzig Olympiad he distinguished himself by beating Mikhail Tal, thereby becoming the first British player to defeat a reigning World Champion since Blackburne beat Lasker in 1899.
ARB Thomas and Jonathan Penrose at the Hastings Congress of 1950/1951

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Jonathan Penrose vs Mikhail Tal, Leipzig Olympiad, 1960, 1-0, Modern Benoni
A deep strategist who could also hold his own tactically, he suffered from the defect of insufficient physical stamina and it was this that was to bring about a decline in his play and in his results. He collapsed during a game at the Ilford Chess Congress, and a year later, at the Siegen Olympiad of 1970, he had a more serious collapse that necessitated his withdrawal from the vent after the preliminary groups had been played. The doctors found nothing vitally wrong with him that his physique could not sustain.

He continued to play but his results suffered from a lack of self-confidence and at the Nice Olympiad of 1974 he had a wretched result on board 3, winning only 1 game and losing 6 out of 15.
Darga V Penrose29th December 1955: Klaus Darga of Germany in play against Britain’s Jonathan Penrose during the International Chess Congress at Hastings. (Photo by Folb/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)
Possibly too his profession (a lecturer in psychology) was also absorbing him more and more and too part less and less in international and national chess.
Jonathan Penrose
Yet, he had already done enough to show that he was the equal of the greatest British players in his command and understanding of the game and he ranks alongside Staunton, Blackburne, Atkins and CHO’D Alexander as a chess figure of world class.”
Here is his Wikipedia entry
From The Oxford Companion to Chess by Hooper & Whyld :
“The leading English player during the 1960s, International Master (1961), International Correspondence Chess Master (1980), lecturer in psychology. Early in his chess career Penrose decided to remain an amateur and as a consequence played in few international tournaments. He won the British Championship from 1958 to 1963 and from 1966 to 1969, ten times in all (a record); and he played in nine Olympiads from 1952 to 1974, notably scoring + 10=5 on first board at Lugano 1968, a result bettered only by the world champion Petrosyan.
IM Dr. Jonathan Penrose OBE
In the early 1970s Penrose further restricted his chess because the stress of competitive play adversely affected his health.”
The second edition (1996) adds this :
“He turned to correspondence play, was the highest rated postal player in the world 1987-9, and led the British team to victory in the 9th Correspondence Olympiad.”

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Here is a discussion about Jonathan on the English Chess Forum
From The Encyclopedia of Chess (Robert Hale, 1970 & 1976) by Anne Sunnucks :
“International Master (1961) and British Champion in 1958 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1969.
Jonathan Penrose was born in Colchester on 7th October 1933, the son of Professor LS Penrose, the well-known geneticist, who was also a strong player and composer of endgame studies.
The whole Penrose family plays chess and Jonathan learned the game when he was 4. At the age of 12 he joined Hampstead Chess Club and the following year played for Essex for the first time, won his first big tournament, the British Boys’ Championship, and represented England against Ireland in a boy’s match, which was the forerunner of the Glorney Cup competition, which came into being the following year.
By the time he was 17 Penrose was recognised as one of the big hopes of British Chess. Playing in the Hastings Premier Tournament for the first time in `1950 – 1951, he beat the French Champion Nicholas Rossolimo and at Southsea in 1950 he beat two International Grandmasters, Effim Bogoljubov and Savielly Tartakower.
Penrose played for the British Chess Federation in a number of Chess Olympiads since 1952. In 1960, at Leipzig, came one of the best performances of his career, when he beat the reigning World Champion, Mikhail Tal. He became the first British player to beat a reigning World Champion since JH Blackburne beat Emmanuel Lasker in 1899, and the first player to defeat Tal since he won the World Championship earlier that year. Penrose’s score in this Olympiad was only half-a-point short of the score required to qualify for the International Grandmaster title.
IM Dr. Jonathan Penrose OBE
His ninth victory in the British Championships in 1968 equalled the record held by HE Atkins, who has held the title more times than any other player.
Penrose is a lecturer in psychology at Enfield College of Technology and has never been in a position to devote a great deal of time to the game. He is married to a former contender in the British Girls Championship and British Ladies’s Championship, Margaret Wood, daughter of Frank Wood, Hon. Secretary of the Oxfordshire Chess Association.

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Penrose was awarded the O.B.E. for his services to chess in 1971.”
Penrose was Southern Counties Champion for 1949-50.
In 1983 Jonathan became England’s fifth Correspondence Grandmaster (CGM) following Keith Richardson, Adrian Hollis, Peter Clarke and Simon Webb.
Sadly, there is no existent book on the life and games of Jonathan Penrose : a serious omission in chess literature.
Dr. Jonathan Penrose OBE
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Birthday of IM Michael Hennigan (08-x-1970)
2020-10-08
We send best wishes to IM Michael Hennigan.
Michael Thomas Hennigan was born on October 8th, 1970 in Hammersmith, London. His mother’s name was Donnelly.
Michael attended the City of London School.
Michael became World Under-18 Youth Champion in 1988 in Aguadilla (Puerto Rico).
He became a FIDE Master in 1990 and an International Master title in 1991 and in the same year was British Under-21 Champion at Eastbourne and was British Champion in 1993 in Dundee beating Dharshan Kumaran in the play-off.
In 1995 he was 1st= in the Arnold Cup in Gausdal with Igor Rausis
His peak FIDE rating (according to Felice and Megabase 2020) was 2465 in July 1994 at the age of 24.
He played for North West Eagles in the Four Nations Chess League.
Michael married WIM Rita Zimmersmann and settled in London. Rita subsequently became Rita Atkins.
Michael stopped playing in 2010 but has recently in 2020 started playing online chess on the chess.com platform.
Michael is a Senior Director with FTI Consulting
With the white pieces Michael used to be an e4 player but in 2020 has switched to 1.g3 to get back into the swing of things.
As the second player he plays the Sicilian Four Knights and the King’s Indian Defence.

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Stuart Conquest vs Michael Hennigan at 4NCL,, photo by Meri Grigoryan
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Birthday of IM Simon Knott (19-X-1958)
2020-10-19
We offer best wishes to IM Simon John Bradley Knott on his birthday
Simon was born on Sunday, October 19th 1958 in Lambeth, London to Simon Harold John Arthur Knott and Josephine Whowell.
Simon attended Trinity College, Cambridge.
He became a FIDE Master in 1990 and an International Master in 2001. According to Felice and Megabase 2020 his peak FIDE rating was 2401 in October 2002 at the age of 43.
Simon was Southern Counties (SCCU) champion in the 1995-96 and 2001-02 seasons.
Simon plays for Hertford and Barbican in the Four Nations Chess League.
As white Simon plays the Queen’s Gambit via a 1.Nf3 or 1.c4 move order. There are zero 1.e4 games!
As the second player he plays the French Winawer and the Grünfeld Defence.

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Simon Knott (front, keeling)
IM Simon Knott
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Death Anniversary of Philip Walsingham Sergeant (27-i-1872 20-x-1952)
2020-10-20
BCN remembers Philip Walsingham Sergeant who passed away on Monday, October 20th 1952.
PWS was born in Kensington on Saturday, January 27th, 1872 to Lewis Sergeant and Emma Louisa Sergeant (née Robertson) and was baptised at All Saints Church, Notting Hill. According to PWS’s baptism record Lewis was an author.
According to PWS in A Century of British Chess :
“When I was seven years of age – about the period, by the way, in which my father began to teach me Greek – he began also to initiate me into chess. Not that he designed it as a consolatory set-off to my application to Greek; for he loved the Classics well, though, going up to Cambridge with small classical exhibition, he had turned to Mathematics, and therein took his degree. ”
According to the 1881 census PWS (aged 9) lived with his parents and numerous siblings : Dorothy (aged 7), Winifred (6), Hilda (5), Bernard (2), John (his grandfather aged 76) and Mary (his grandmother aged 75). They had staff, Elizabeth Fraser and Sarah Martin. They lived at 10, Addison Road, North, Kensington.
According to “Joseph Foster. Oxford Men and Their Colleges, 1880-1892. 2 vols. Oxford, England: James Parker and Co, 1893″ :
PWS attended St. Paul’s School and then Trinity College, Oxford to read Classics where he attained Honour Moderations.
and here is the record from the above publication :
Entry for Philip Walsingham Sergeant in Joseph Foster. Oxford Men and Their Colleges, 1880-1892. 2 vols. Oxford, England: James Parker and Co, 1893
We do not know if PWS played in the Varsity matches of 1892 – 1895 : Britbase does not (yet) include player details for these matches.
PWS married Minnie Boundford (born 27th February 1889) in 1909 in Hampstead and they lived at 5, Dukes Avenue, Chiswick where PWS was listed as an author and Minnie as someone who carried out “unpaid domestic duties”. Minnie was 17 years younger than PWS. Minnie’s father was a joiner and a carpenter.
They had two daughters Margaret (born 1910) and Kathleen (born 1911).
In October 1946 Minnie and PWS remarried. Presumably this was rather unusual in that day and age.
According to The Oxford Companion to Chess (OUP, 2nd edition, 1996) by Hooper and Whyld :
PWS was an English author of biographical games collections for Charousek, Morphy and Pillsbury as well as other works of importance such as A Century of British Chess (1943) and Championship Chess (1938).
From The Encyclopedia of Chess (BT Batsford, 1977) by Harry Golombek :
“A professional writer on chess and popular historical subjects. Without any pretentions to mastership, he represented Oxford University in the years 1892 – 5 and assisted RC Griffith in preparing three editions of Modern Chess Openings.
In chess he dealt with a number of important subjects : Morphy’s Games of Chess, London, 1916; Charousek’s Games of Chess, London, 1919; Pillsbury’s Chess Career (in collaboration with WH Watts), London, 1923; Championship Chess, London, 1938.
All these are lucidly and carefully written but suffer from the defect that, being neither a master player nor a professional annotator, he was not competent to deal with the annotational part of the work. Probably his best book on chess was A Century of British Chess, London, 1934.
From British Chess Magazine, Volume LXX11 (72), Number 11 (November), page 324 we have this rather brief obituary (presumably written by Brian Reilly):
“We regret to have to report the death, at the age of eighty-one of Philip W. Sergeant, the author of A Century of British Chess, which we imagine is in most chess libraries. He was the author of several well-known historical books – but we are only concerned here with his chess activities, which included representing Oxford University 1892-5; helping RC Griffith with two editions of Modern Chess Openings; playing for Middlesex, winning the chess championship of the authors’ club for several year, and latterly as an honoured member; and occasionally obtaining the championship of the Guildford Chess Club. Our sympathy with his widow and two daughters is sincere.”
”
He was a cousin of EG Sergeant.

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From Wikipedia :
“Philip Walsingham Sergeant (27 January 1872, Notting Hill, London[1] – 20 October 1952)[2] was a British professional writer on chess and popular historical subjects.[3][4] He collaborated on the fifth (1933), sixth (1939), and seventh (1946) editions of Modern Chess Openings, an important reference work on the chess openings. He also wrote biographical game collections of Paul Morphy (Morphy’s Games of Chess (1916) and Morphy Gleanings), Rudolf Charousek (Charousek’s Games of Chess (1919)), and Harry Nelson Pillsbury (Pillsbury’s Chess Career, with W. H. Watts, 1922), and other important books such as A Century of British Chess (1934) and Championship Chess (1938).”
Harry Golombek writes that, “Without any pretensions to mastership, he represented Oxford University in the years 1892-5”.[3] Golombek considers A Century of British Chess probably Sergeant’s best chess book, but opines that although Sergeant’s chess books are lucidly written, they suffer from the defect that, as a non-master, he was not competent to deal with the annotational aspect of his work.
He was a second cousin of Edward Guthlac Sergeant.
Philip Walsingham Sergeant
Charousek’s Games of Chess
The Rice Memorial Chess Tournament, 1916
Pillsbury’s Chess Career, London, 1923
A Century of British Chess, London, 1934
An Introduction to the Endgame at Chess
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Birthday of IM Adam Hunt (21-x-1980)
2020-10-21
We offer IM Adam Hunt best wishes on his birthday.
Adam Ceiriog Hunt was born on Tuesday, October 21st, 1980 in Oxford and his mother’s maiden name was Williams. The UK Number one single was “Woman in Love” by Barbara Streisand. Adam shares his birthday with Kim Kardashian.
(Ceiriog was the bardic name of John Ceiriog Hughes (1832–87)
Adam attended The Cherwell School and The University of Sussex to study general biology.
Jeremy Morse, Adam Hunt (12), Nick Pert (11) and Nigel Short at the Lloyds Bank Masters
Adam became an International Master in 2001 and then a FIDE Trainer in 2016. According to Felice and Megabase 2020 his attained his peak FIDE rating of 2466 in January 2008 at the age of 28.
Adam Hunt in 1998 Cathy Rogers
In 2004 Adam was living in Headington, Oxfordshire and in 2007 he moved to Ipswich in Suffolk and was married in 2019. Recently, Adam and his partner became parents to Henry.
Most recently Adam has played for 4NCL Blackthorne Russia, prior to that Bettson.com, Midlands Monarchs and Perceptron Youth with Witney being his original team.
He is Director of Chess at Woodbridge School in Suffolk and is the brother of IM Harriet Hunt
With the white pieces is (almost exclusively) an e4 player playing the main line of Ruy Lopez (8.c3) and favouring the Fischer-Sozin against the Najdorf.
As the second player Adam plays the Sicilian Najdorf and a 50:50 mixture of the King’s Indian and Grünfeld Defences.
Adam is the brother of IM Harriet Hunt

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Chess Strategy: Move by Move, Adam Hunt, Everyman, 2013
IM Adam Hunt
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Birthday of IM James Sherwin (25-x-1933)
2020-10-25
We send best wishes to IM James Sherwin, a welcome long term visitor from “over the pond”
James Terry Sherwin was born on Wednesday, October 25th 1933 in New York. and attended The University of Columbia.
The Columbia College chess team of 1949–1952 after a radio match with Yale. Right to left: James Sherwin, Eliot Hearst, Carl Burger, Francis Mechner (Courtesy of the Columbia University Archives).
He became an International Master in 1958 at the age of 25 and, according to Felice, his peak FIDE rating was 2400 in 1969.
IM James Sherwin, Photograph copyright © 2001 Helen Milligan of New Zealand Chess
Much to his chagrin (we recommend you do not ask him about this!) James is famous for the “Sherwin slid the rook here with his pinky, as if to emphasize the cunning of this mysterious move” annotation in Game 1, “Too Little, Too Late” of My Sixty Memorable Games by Robert James Fischer (and game introductions by Larry Evans).
Since 1999 James has been a frequent entrant to English Rapidplay tournaments at Richmond and Golders Green and, in August 2019 in Torquay, aged 86, tied for first place in the Rapidplay event at the British Championships.
IM James Sherwin
James is registered with the Wiltshire County Chess Association and since 2015 has played only rapidplay games rated by the ECF. He currently has a rating of 204D.
With the white pieces James plays 1.d4, 1.Nf3 and 1.e4 in that order of preference.
As the second player he essays the Sicilian Najdorf and the Grünfeld Defence.
He has plus scores against Donald Byrne, Robert Byrne, Herbert Seidman, Sidney Bernstein, George Kramer and Raymond Weinstein (amongst others). His score with Fischer was 0.5/8 (but don’t mention it!).
From Chessgames.com :
“James Terry Sherwin, born in New York, became an International Master in 1958. In 1961, he was Chairman of the USCF Rules Committee. He was the Executive Vice President of GAF Corporation who was the American Chess Foundation (ACF) President from 1979 to 1990. He took 5th place in the 1953 World Junior Championship. He tied for 1st place with Alexander Kevitz in the 1954-55 Manhattan Chess club championship. He took 17th place in the Portoroz Interzonal (1958). Sherwin finished in 3rd place twice in US chess championships (1957-58 and 1958-59). He won the first Eastern Open Chess Championship, held in Washington DC, in 1960.”
Here is an article featuring JTS from The Wiltshire Times
Mr Sherwin, 80, met and played against the new members of Bradford & Avon Valley Youth Chess Club on their opening night at St Nicholas Hall on Tuesday. Photo courtesy of The Wiltshire Times
From Wikipedia :
“James Terry Sherwin (born October 25, 1933)[1] is an American corporate executive and International Master in chess.
Born in New York City[1] in 1933, Sherwin attended Stuyvesant High School, Columbia College (Phi Beta Kappa) and Columbia Law School. He graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Officer Candidate School in 1956 and later became a Lieutenant Commander. He is an attorney admitted to the New York and Supreme Court Bars. He joined GAF Corporation in 1960 serving in various legal and operational roles and eventually becoming its Chief Financial Officer. He was CFO at Triangle Industries from 1983 to 1984, rejoining GAF Corporation as Vice Chairman from 1985 to 1990.
IM James T Sherwin
While at GAF, in 1988, he was indicted by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, for stock manipulation in connection with the 1986 sale of stock owned by GAF.[2] He was convicted after three trials, but the conviction was reversed on appeal[3] and dismissed with prejudice.[4] In 1991 he was appointed Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Hunter Douglas N.V., a Dutch multinational company, in which capacity he served until 1999. Since then he has been a Director and an adviser to Hunter Douglas.
IM James T Sherwin
He is an Overseer of the International Rescue Committee and member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He received an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from the University of Bath in December, 2007.”

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“In chess, Sherwin finished third and tied for third in the US Chess Championship four times and tied for fourth three times.[5] He was Intercollegiate Champion and New York State Champion in 1951 and US Speed Champion in 1956–57 and 1959–60. He earned the International Master title in 1958.[1] He played in the Portorož Interzonal in 1958, which was part of the 1960 World Championship cycle. While he finished only 17th out of 21 players, he scored (+2–2=2) against the six players who qualified from the tournament to the Candidates tournament at Bled 1959. He is a previous President of the American Chess Foundation.

Sherwin resides with his wife, Hiroko, near Bath, United Kingdom.”
James Sherwin, middle row, third from right

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Birthday of IM Susan Lalic (28-x-1965)
2020-10-28
BCN wishes IM Susan Lalic Happy Birthday
Susan Kathryn Walker was born on Thursday, October 28th, 1965 in Chatham, Kent. Her mother’s maiden is / was Bacon. She has a brother, Stephen.
She attended Nonsuch High School for Girls from 1977 to 1984.
Susan married Keith Arkell in 1986 and then Bogdan Lalic in Lewes, East Sussex in 1994 and finally Graeme Buckley in Sutton in 2001.
With Bogdan she had a son, Peter D, who is a strong player in his own right.
There are ten players in MegaBase 2020 whose surname is Lalic.
She became a Woman’s FIDE Master in 1986, Woman’s International Master in 1987, Woman’s Grandmaster in 1988 and an International Master in 1996.
Susan Walker
According to Felice and Megabase 2020 Susan achieved a peak rating of 2405 in January 1997 at the age of 29.
From the Praxis Bath Zonal Tournament of 1987. Susan Walker is at the rear on the left.
Susan has played in the Four Nations Chess League for Slough, Wood Green and Guildford and her most recent games in MegaBase 2020 are from 2012.
Keith Arkell, Susan Walker and Jeremy Morse at the Lloyds Bank Masters
She is five-time British Women’s Chess Champion: 1986, 1990–1992, and 1998 and has represented England in nine Olympiads.
LK Semenova vs Susan Walker at the 1984 Women’s Olympiad
Susan is very active is Surrey junior chess and teaches in many schools.
IM Susan Lalic at a Surrey Megafinal

With the White pieces Susan is almost exclusively an e4 player (preferring the Scotch Game) but curiously (and why not you might ask) she has employed The Polish Opening more than once with success.
As the second player she defends the Caro-Kann, Larsen-Spassky, Smyslov and the Classical Variations and the Nimzo-Indian Defence.
WFM Helen Milligan vs Susan Arkell

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Susan Lalic and friends
From Wikipedia :
“Susan Kathryn Lalic (née Walker; born 28 October 1965) is an English chess player, holding both International Master (IM) and Woman Grandmaster (WGM) titles. She is five-time British Women’s Chess Champion: 1986, 1990–1992, and 1998.[2]
Lalic has played for England nine times in Chess Olympiads, from 1984 to 2000, inclusive. From 1986 to 1998, she played on the top board.[3]
Lalic was educated at Nonsuch High School for Girls from 1977 to 1984, and has been married in the past to Keith Arkell and then to Bogdan Lalić. Currently she is married to International Master Graeme Buckley.[4][5]
Highest rating from 1987-2012 is 2356(within 133 games)[6]”
Susan Lalic and friends, rear, second from left
Your Chess Questions Answered by Susan Lalic,, 1999
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Birthday of IM Chris Beaumont (28-X-1952)
2020-10-28
We send best wishes to IM Christopher R Beaumont on his birthday, 28th October 1952.

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IM Chris Beaumont
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Birthday of IM Gary Lane (04-xi-1964)
2020-11-04
We send birthday wishes “down under” to IM Gary Lane on his birthday.
Teresa Needham and Gary Lane
Gary William Lane was born this day (November 4th) in 1964 in Paignton, Devon.
IM Gary Lane
Gary lived in Brixham, Devon and attended Churston Ferrers Grammar School (also in Brixham) leaving in 1983.
Gary became a FIDE Master in 1984 and an International Master in 1987 and won the Commonwealth Chess Championship in 1988. According to Felice and Megabase2020 his peak FIDE rating was 2464 in July 2001 aged 37.
IM Gary Lane
This was written about Gary aged 14 prior to the 1979 Spassky vs the BCF Junior Squad simultaneous display :
“Churston Grammar and Paignton. Rating 173. BCF Junior squad U-14 co-champion, 1978.”
Gary Lane and Michael Adams

In 2004 won the Australian Championship and was voted Player of the Year. According to Sharpen Your Chess Tactics Gary is a well-known trainer, and has been involved in coaching some of England and Australia’s top junior players.
IM Gary Lane at British Chess Championships 2013, courtesy of John Upham Photography

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Gary and friends at the NatWest Bank Young Masters
From Wikipedia :
“Gary William Lane (born 4 November 1964) is a professional chess player and author. He became an International Master in 1987 and won the Commonwealth Chess Championship in 1988. He has written over thirty books on chess, including Find the Winning Move, Improve Your Chess in 7 Days and Prepare to Attack. There have been translations in French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. In the 1980s the ITV documentary “To Kill a King” was screened nationwide in Great Britain.It featured a young Michael Adams and Lane. This feature is shown regularly at chess film festivals.”
IM Gary Lane
“After his marriage to Woman International Master Nancy Jones, he moved to Australia, winning the Australian Chess Championship in 2004. He won the 2005 Oceania Chess Championship and represented Oceania at the Chess World Cup 2005.
He has also represented Australia in the 2002, 2004, and 2006 Chess Olympiads.[2] In the 2004 Olympiad he helped Australia score a 2–2 draw with his former country England, scoring a decisive win over Nigel Short.[3] He has been a chess coach for England or Australia at the World Junior and also European Junior championship for over a decade[when?].”
Gary Lane & family at the London Chess Classic, courtesy of John Upham Photography
“In 2012 he won the George Trundle Masters in Auckland, New Zealand with a score of 7/9,[4] and the NZ South Island Championships in Dunedin, with a score of 8/9.[5] He was unbeaten in both events.
In 2015 at the Australian tournament the Doeberl Cup he beat Loek van Wely the reigning Dutch Champion and one of the world’s leading players. [6] He played the Closed Sicilian which he has also written about in two books. In 2016 he came =1st at George Trundle Masters in Auckland, New Zealand with a score of 7/9,[7] and followed this up with =1st place scoring 8/9 at the NZ South Island Championships in Canterbury.[8] He did not lose any games in the two events. At the 2nd Fiji International Open Chess Tournament Lane dominated the event winning with the perfect score of 7/7.[9] A score of 9/9 and clear first place was the result at the 1st Fiji International Rapid Open.[10]
Lane is a supporter of Torquay United F.C. [11]”
Peter Wells, Gary Lane, John Emms and David Norwood
Jon Manley as editor of Kingpin Magazine wrote a spoof version of Gary’s Agony Aunt column
Gary has written almost 30 chess books :
(1990) The C3 Sicilian: Analysis and Complete Games. The Crowood Press. ISBN 978-1-852233-18-1.
(1990) The C3 Sicilian: Analysis and Complete Games. The Crowood Press. ISBN 978-1-852233-18-1., Gary Lane
Lane, Gary (1991). The Ruy Lopez for the Tournament Player. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713468-12-0.
Lane, Gary (1991). The Ruy Lopez for the Tournament Player. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713468-12-0.
Lane, Gary (1992). Winning with the Closed Sicilian. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713469-72-1.
Lane, Gary (1992). Winning with the Closed Sicilian. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713469-72-1.
Lane, Gary (1993). Winning with the Bishop’s Opening. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713471-13-7.
Lane, Gary (1993). Winning with the Bishop’s Opening. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713471-13-7.
Lane, Gary (1993). Winning with the Scotch. Henry Holt. ISBN 0-8050-2940-0.
Lane, Gary (1993). Winning with the Scotch. Henry Holt. ISBN 0-8050-2940-0.
Lane, Gary (1994). Beating the French. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713473-90-2.
Lane, Gary (1994). Beating the French. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713473-90-2.
Lane, Gary (1994). Winning with the Fischer-Sozin Attack. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713475-80-7.
Lane, Gary (1994). Winning with the Fischer-Sozin Attack. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713475-80-7.
Lane, Gary (1995). Blackmar–Diemer Gambit. Batsford Chess Library / An Owl Book / Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-4230-X.
Lane, Gary (1995). Blackmar–Diemer Gambit. Batsford Chess Library / An Owl Book / Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-4230-X.
Lane, Gary (1996). A Guide to Attacking Chess. B.T.Batsford Ltd. ISBN 0-7134-8010-6.
Lane, Gary (1996). A Guide to Attacking Chess. B.T.Batsford Ltd. ISBN 0-7134-8010-6.
Lane, Gary (1997). The Grand Prix Attack: attacking lines with f4 against the Sicilian. Batsford. ISBN 0-8050-2940-0.
Lane, Gary (1997). The Grand Prix Attack: attacking lines with f4 against the Sicilian. Batsford. ISBN 0-8050-2940-0.
Lane, Gary (1999). Victory in the Opening. Sterling Pub Co Inc. ISBN 9780713484274.
Lane, Gary (1999). Victory in the Opening. Sterling Pub Co Inc. ISBN 9780713484274.
Lane, Gary (2000). The Vienna Game. Everyman Chess. ISBN 0-8050-2940-0.
Lane, Gary (2000). The Vienna Game. Everyman Chess. ISBN 0-8050-2940-0.
Lane, Gary (2001). The Ultimate Colle. Sterling Pub Co Inc. ISBN 9780713486865.
Lane, Gary (2001). The Ultimate Colle. Sterling Pub Co Inc. ISBN 9780713486865.
Lane, Gary (2001). The Ultimate Closed Sicilian. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713486-87-2.
Lane, Gary (2001). The Ultimate Closed Sicilian. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713486-87-2.
Lane, Gary (2003). Ideas Behind the Modern Chess Openings: Attacking With White. Batsford. ISBN 9780713487121.
Lane, Gary (2003). Ideas Behind the Modern Chess Openings: Attacking With White. Batsford. ISBN 9780713487121.
Lane, Gary (2003). Find the Checkmate. Batsford. ISBN 0-8050-2940-0.
Lane, Gary (2003). Find the Checkmate. Batsford. ISBN 0-8050-2940-0.
Lane, Gary (2004). The Bishop’s Opening Explained. Batsford. ISBN 0-7134-8917-0.
Lane, Gary (2004). The Bishop’s Opening Explained. Batsford. ISBN 0-7134-8917-0.
Lane, Gary (2004). ‘Find the Checkmate. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-713488-61-6.
Lane, Gary (2004). Playing Chess: Step by Step. Mud Puddle Books. ISBN 978-1-594120-55-8.
Lane, Gary (2004). Playing Chess: Step by Step. Mud Puddle Books. ISBN 978-1-594120-55-8.
Lane, Gary (2005). Ideas Behind Modern Chess Openings: Black. Batsford. ISBN 9780713489507.
Lane, Gary (2005). The Scotch Game Explained. Batsford. ISBN 0-7134-8940-5.
Lane, Gary (2005). The Scotch Game Explained. Batsford. ISBN 0-7134-8940-5.
Lane, Gary (2006). The Ruy Lopez Explained. Batsford. ISBN 0-7134-8978-2.
Lane, Gary (2007). Improve Your chess In 7 Days. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-7134-9050-3.
Lane, Gary (2007). Improve Your chess In 7 Days. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-7134-9050-3.
Lane, Gary (2008). The Greatest Ever Chess Tricks and Traps. Everyman Chess. ISBN 9781857445770.
Lane, Gary (2008). The Greatest Ever Chess Tricks and Traps. Everyman Chess. ISBN 9781857445770.
Lane, Gary (2009). Sharpen Your Chess Tactics in 7 Days. Batsford. ISBN 9781906388287.
Lane, Gary (2009). Sharpen Your Chess Tactics in 7 Days. Batsford. ISBN 9781906388287.
Lane, Gary (2011). Prepare to Attack. Everyman Chess. ISBN 978-1857446500.
Lane, Gary (2011). Prepare to Attack. Everyman Chess. ISBN 978-1857446500.
Lane, Gary (2013). Gary Lane’s Chess Puzzle Book. e+books. ISBN 978-1-927179-14-7.
Lane, Gary (2013). Gary Lane’s Chess Puzzle Book. e+books. ISBN 978-1-927179-14-7.
IM Gary Lane, courtesy of John Upham Photography
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Birthday of IM Philip Morris (05-xi-1957)
2020-11-05
We wish IM Philip J Morris all the best on his birthday, this day (November 5th) in 1967.
Phil plays regularly for Beckenham & Charlton Chess Club in the London Chess League and has played for Invicta Knights Maidstone in the Four Nations League.

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Birthday of IM Gary Quillan (07-xi-1970)
2020-11-07
Best wishes to IM Gary M Quillan on his birthday, this day (November 7th) in 1970.

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Garry Quillan
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Birthday of IM Alan Merry (08-xi-1996)
2020-11-08
BCN send Birthday greetings to IM Alan Merry
Alan Baxter Merry was born on Friday, November 8th, 1996 in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk. His mother’s maiden name is Guymer. Alan has a younger brother James Clayton Merry (born 1999). James is also registered with Suffolk CCA but have never had a published grading or rating.
FIDE rating profile for IM Alan Merry
Crosstable for Purley Big Slick International, 2013
He became a FIDE Master in 2013 and an International Master in 2016. His peak rating according to Felice was 2396 in July 2016. However this has been surpassed and according to MegaBase 2020 it is 2460 in June 2018 at the age of 22.
Alan won the 2014 Golders Green Open with a convincing 5.5/6 :
Part crosstable for 2014 Golders Green Open
and has won further events since including the Kingsley Healthcare Great Yarmouth Congress in 2018.
IM Alan Merry at the 2019 Basingstoke 4NCL Congress
Alan plays for Suffolk County Chess Association and in 4NCL started with Anglian Avengers, then the ADs and finally moving to Barbican in the 2015/16 season. His current ECF grading is 237A for standard-play and 236A for rapid-play. His FIDE standard play rating is 2427.
Alan has a plus score against : James Jackson, Ravi Haria, John Nunn, Peter Sowray, James Adair, Matthew Wadsworth, Jack Rudd and Simon Williams to name but a few.
With the white pieces Alan has a varied repertoire favouring (unusually) the Four Knights game.
As the second player he champions the French Winawer and the Modern Benoni.

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IM Alan Merry
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Birthday of IM James Adair (09-xi-1992)
2020-11-09
IM James Adair playing GM Hikaru Nakamura at the London Chess Classic 2014
BCN wishes Happy birthday to IM James Adair.
James Robert Adair was born on Monday, November 9th in 1992 in Reading, Berkshire.
James attended Little Heath School, Tilehurst, Reading and joined Reading Chess Club and was an active player in the Berkshire League and in the Surrey Border League. His father Andrew took up chess to support James as a junior.
He then read Mathematics at The University of York and now is employed by Aviva plc (formerly Norwich Union Assurance) in the field of insurance.
James became a FIDE Master in 2012 and gained his International Master title in August 2014.
According to Felice his best FIDE rating was 2489 in December 2016. According to MegaBase 2020 it was 2492 in August 2018 at the age of 26.
James started his 4NCL career in the 2006/7 season with Conquistadors and then transferred to Guildford not long after. By 2010/11 James was playing for the bar loving Sambuca Sharks team. In 2011 James transferred to 4NCL White Rose as he had just started University in Yorkshire. He was also playing for York RI.
In 2009 he shared equal 1st (4.5/5) with Alexei Slavin in the Uxbridge Open, a sadly missed e2-e4 event. Since then James has had various tournament successes.
FIDE rating profile for IM James Adair

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James has plus scores against : Peter Roberson, Jack Rudd, Richard Bates and Matthew Turner amongst others.

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IM James Adair
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Death Anniversary of David Welch (30-x-1945 09-xi-2019)
2020-11-09
Just over a year ago today we learnt the sad news that popular longtime Arbiter and Organizer David Welch had passed away at the age of 74 after a long illness : he was being cared for in The Royal Liverpool Hospital. The funeral took place at Landican Crematorium, Arrowe Park CH49 5LW at 12 noon on Friday 6th December. Following the funeral, the wake took place at the Grove House Hotel, Grove Road, Wallasey CH44 4BT.
David was born on Tuesday, October 30th 1945 in Brampton, Chesterfield, Derbyshire and attended Chesterfield Grammar School (see below).
He played for Wallasey Chess Club for many years having initially been a member of Liverpool Chess Club.
David attended Queens’ College, Cambridge reading Natural Sciences (Chemistry) and (according to John Swain) David served Cambridge University Chess Club as Junior Treasurer, Librarian and Bulletin Editor.
In 1968 David and Peter Purland started teaching at the same Liverpool school (Liverpool College) on the same day and continued their friendship from there. David also ran the college scout troop.
In the same year David joined Liverpool Chess Club and became a leading light fairly early on.
David Welch (30-x-1945 09-xi-2019), photograph by John Upham at 2012 4NCL
David became a BCF arbiter in the early 1970s eventually becoming the BCFs Chief Arbiter and then the ECFs Chief Arbiter and was heavily involved in many British Championships around the country.
David was curator of ECF equipment for some time and personally funded much of the BCFs and ECFs early equipment stock.
He became a FIDE International Arbiter as early as 1977 and was awarded the FIDE International Organizer title in 2010.
In 2007 David received the ECF Presidents Award from Gerry Walsh. Here is the citation in full (from the 2008 ECF Yearbook) :
“David Welch started chess organisation early being captain of the Chesterfield Grammar School team that played both in the school’s league and in the local adult league. He joined the Liverpool Chess Club after leaving University in 1968 and has held various posts with them , he is now their President. He set-up the Liverpool Chess Congress in about 1978.
Additionally, he was the director of the Liverpool Chess Congress. Although now defunct this was in its day the largest junior event in the UK (perhaps even the world) having 2000 entrants at the time of Spassky-Fisher (sic). He has also been involved in the Liverpool city of culture initiative.
He had also had a considerable involvement with the ECF. He is the the Merseyside representative to the ECF. He has been helping run the British Championships since 1981; starting at one of the arbiting team he has been Director/Manager of the congress since 2005. He has been Chief Arbiter of the Federation since about 1992. He also does the arbiting at a number of congresses and is, in particular, the Chief Arbiter of the 4NCL.”
David Welch receives FIDE Arbiter Award
David shared the exact same date of birth as long time friend and fellow arbiter, Peter Purland.
Here is an excellent tribute from John Saunders
Here is a tribute from Liverpool College

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in 2016 David received recognition from FIDE for his long service as an International Arbiter. David was the third English arbiter to receive the honour, following Stewart Reuben and Gerry Walsh in 2014.
We send our condolences to all of his many family and friends.
David Welch, photograph by John Upham
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Birthday of GM David Howell (14-xi-1990)
2020-11-14
Birthday of GM David Wei Lang Howell (14-xi-1990)
David was Southern Counties (SCCU) champion for the 2010-11 season sharing with Danny Gormally.
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Birthday of IM Charles Cobb (15-xi-1978)
2020-11-15
Birthday of IM Charles A Cobb (15-xi-1978)
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Death Anniversary of Edward Sergeant OBE (3-xii-1881 16-xi-1961)
2020-11-16
We remember Edward Sergeant OBE (3-xii-1881 16-xi-1961)
Edward Guthlac Sergeant was born on Saturday, December 3rd 1881 : in the same year British Chess Magazine was founded by John Watkinson.
He was born in Crowland, South Holland, Lincolnshire. The registration district was Peterborough and the inferred county was Northamptonshire. His father was William R Sergeant (aged 27) and his mother was Frances E Sergeant (aged 25). He had a sister, Hilda who was one year older. William was a registered general medical practitioner.
He was named Guthlac after a monk who “came to what was then an island in the Fens to live the life of a hermit.”
Signature of EG Sergeant from a Brian Reilly “after dinner” postcard from Margate 1936.
According to the 1891 census EGS was aged 9 and living with his father, mother, sister and their domestic servant Margaret A George who was their general domestic servant who hailed from Scotland. They lived at 2, Gladstone Terrace, Gateshead, NE8 4DY. This was in the Ecclesiastical parish of Christchurch.
2, Gladstone Terrace, Gateshead, NE8 4DY
In the 1911 census aged 29 as nephew to the head of the household (5 St Peters Terrace, Cambridge) EGS is listed as a solicitor who is single. The size of the household in 1911 was relatively modest at 12. He was living with George Edward Wherry (59, surgeon university professor) and his wife Albinia Lucy Wherry (53). Albinia Lucy Wherry was a nurse and also writer. During WWI she was stationed in Paris at the Gare du Nord where she supported British forces from 1915-18. the sub-registration district was St Andrew the Great.
According to Edward Winter in Where did they live? in April 1916 EGS was living at 39 Chichele Road, Cricklewood, London NW2 3AN, England. EGWs source for this is : Chess Amateur, April 1916, page 202.
39 Chichele Road, Cricklewood, London NW2 3AN
1918 was an important year for Edward when he married Dorothy Frances Carter (born 1887) in Gravesend. In the same year Dorothy and Edward had a son Richard who passed away in 2014
Two years later Dorothy and Edward had a son Lewis Carter Sergeant born on January 30th 1920. The birth was registered in Paddington. Lewis lived at 3 Woodhill Court, 175 Woodhill, London, SE18 5HSL and passed away in 2004 the death being registered in Greenwich.
On the 1920 Electoral Roll, EGS was now living with Dorothy Frances Sergeant at St. Stephen’s Mansions, 5, Monmouth Road, Edmonton.
In 1923 they upped sticks and moved to 27. King Edward’s Grove, Teddington.
Sadly Dorothy passed away in 1926 at the modest age of 39.
Coventry Evening Telegraph 10 October 1933
According to the 1939 census EGS was listed as a widowed, civil servant living at 24, Gloucester Road, Kingston Upon Thames, KT2 7DX. This would be the address that Edward saw out the rest of his life.
24, Gloucester Road, Kingston Upon Thames, KT2 7DX
He shared this address with Edith Carter (born 4th May 1878) who is described as being of “Private Means” and Ada M Wenman (6th August 1881) who is described as being a “domestic”.
In 1949 he was awarded the OBE in the Birthday Honours in recognition of his 39 years’ service in the office of the Solicitor to the Board of Inland Revenue.
According to John Saunders : EGS died in the New Victoria Hospital, New Malden, Surrey, on 16 November 1961. His residence at death had been 24 Gloucester Road, Kingston Hill. Probate (26 Jan 1962) granted to Lewis Carter Sergeant, a Lieutenant-Colonel in HM Army. Effects £6,586.
E.G. Sergeant in characteristic pose v. Miss Vera Menchik at Margate, 1939
From The Encyclopedia of Chess (Batsford, 1977), Harry Golombek OBE :
A British master who had a long and solidly distinguished career in British chess but never quite succeeded in breaking through the barrier to international success. A civil servant by profession, he was awarded the OBE for his services in the Inland Revenue and Sergeant on Stamp Duties was regarded as an authoritative work.
Sergeant’s earliest performance in the British Championship, at the Crystal Palace in London 190, was one of his best. He came =2nd with JH Blackburne. RP Mitchell and GE Wainwright with 6.5 points, a point below the winner of the title, HE Atkins.
He was 3rd at Edinburgh in 1920 and his best result in the competition came in Brighton 193, where he came equal second with H. Golombek, a 1/2 point below the winner, CHO’D Alexander.
A stalwart supporter of the City of London Chess Club, he won its championship in two successive years, 1916 and 1917. He played for Britain against the USA in the 1908 and 1909 cable matches and also played on a high board for London against various American cities in the Insull Trophy matches in the years 1926-31.
As a player he was strongly influenced by the scientific principles of Siegbert Tarrasch and did well during the period when the Tarrasch school enjoyed its heyday. But he was at a loss when confronted with more modern methods.”
Both Sunnucks and Hooper & Whyld are silent on EGS : surprising!
EGS was a cousin of PW Sergeant.
We asked Leonard Barden of his memories of EGS and he was kind enough to reply :
“People have different ways of expressing satisfaction with their position. Botvinnik adjusted his tie, Kasparov put his watch back on, Sergeant rubbed his hands together….He liked to counter the Queen’s Gambit Declined in the classical way with a kind of Lasker Defence.”
From British Chess Magazine, Volume LXXXII, March, 1962, Number 3, pages 76 -80 we reproduce an obituary from Bruce Hayden entitled “E.G. Sergeant – An Appreciation” as follows :
(note the incorrect birth location presumably based on the 1891 census information)
Edward Guthlac Sergeant, part one
Edward Guthlac Sergeant, part two
Edward Guthlac Sergeant, part three
Edward Guthlac Sergeant, part four
Edward Guthlac Sergeant, part five
Sergeant on Stamp Duties

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Here is his Wikipedia entry
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Birthday of GM Michael Adams (17-xi-2019)
2020-11-17
We send best wishes to GM Michael Adams on his birthday, this day (November 17th) in 1971
Michael was Southern Counties (SCCU) champion in the 1996-97 season.
His Wikipedia entry is here
Michael Adams

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Michael, Tara and friend
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Birthday of IM Andrew Kinsman (20-xi-2019)
2020-11-20
Best wishes to IM Andrew Kinsman born on this day Friday November 20, 1964. His mother’s maiden name was (Yvonne) Greening. Andrew has a sister Casandra Suzie Kinsman.
Andrew Peter Harry Kinsman was born in North East Surrey and grew up in Kingston-Upon-Thames near Kingston Hospital (thanks Richard James!). He was a member of Richmond Junior Chess Club.
IM Andrew Kinsman
Andrew was a member of the University of Sussex chess team in 1983 along with IM Byron Jacobs. Andrew became an editor of chess publisher BT Batsford Ltd. following in the footsteps of Bob Wade, Paul Lamford and others.
Andrew was Southern Counties (SCCU) champion for the 1986-87 and 1991-92 seasons.
He made his first Grandmaster norm with his victory in the 1997 Owens Corning International in Wrexham.
Andrew’s peak rating was 2430 in January 1998. He played for Guildford in the Four Nations Chess League and for Wimbledon in other leagues. His last ECF grading was 222D in July 2002 and highest may have been 230B in July 2000.
He left chess and turned to poker becoming a successful player and author and was married to Pauline. They lived in Ditchling Rise in Brighton.
He joined Byron Jacobs to form Chess Press which eventually morphed into First Rank Publishing.
IM Andrew Kinsman
With the white pieces Andrew was consistently a d4 player with the occasional Nf3 thrown in. He played a “slow” Queen’s Gambit (Nf3 inserted before c4) and the Trompowski Attack for variety.
As the second player Andrew played the French Winawer and the Benko Gambit.
Andrew is registered for both Wimbledon and Guildford and represented Wuppertal in the Bundesliga. Andrew’s most recent appearance in 4NCL was the final weekend of the 2001/2 season beating JA Toothill.

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He has written several books on chess (and poker) as follows :
French Winawer by Andrew Kinsman
The Benko Gambit by Andrew Kinsman & Byron Jacobs
Spanish Exchange by Andrew Kinsman
Modern Benoni by Andrew Kinsman
Improve Your Middlegame Play by Andrew Kinsman
IM Andrew Kinsman
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Birthday of GM Stewart Haslinger (25-xi-1981)
2020-11-25
Birthday of GM Stewart Haslinger (25-xi-1981)
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Death Anniversary of IM Robert Wade OBE (10-iv-1921 29-xi-2008)
2020-11-29
We remember IM Bob Wade OBE who was born 100 years ago today on Sunday, April 10th 1921
In 1979 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, Civil Division Bob Wade was awarded the OBE. The citation read simply : “For services to Chess”
He won the BCF Presidents’ Award in 1986.
In the Foreword to the 2009 ECF Yearbook, President Gerry Walsh wrote :
“As I started this report I had just heard the sad news that IM Bob Wade had died aged 87. I first met Bob at one of the Whitby Congresses and in 1972 he played in the Teeside GM Tournament where I recall he beat the three Hungarian players Portisch, Bilek and Sax (ed : aged 51).”
Geurt Gijssen wrote in Chesscafe.com :
“I received the sad news that Bob Wade passed away at the age of eighty seven. He played his last tournament in London in August. When I was young I read about his exploits as a chess player, and he was the arbiter in many important chess events. I met him in 1993 when I was the organizer of the first part of the match Karpov – Timman, played in The Netherlands in three different cities: Zwolle, Arnhem, and Amsterdam. He was the only member of the Appeals Committee and Bob was always present watching the games in the playing hall. He gave me invaluable advice about all elements of the match venues. It was very clear that he was an experienced chess player and arbiter, and I learned many things from him. May he rest in peace.”
From the 1952 Ilford Congress (30 May – 2 June) and originally published in BCM, July 1952, page 187. (l-r) : Harold Israel, Alan Phillips, Bob Wade, Otto Friedman, Abe Yanofsky, Alfred William Bowen and Harold Meek. Thanks to John Saunders and Leonard Barden
Wade was Southern Counties (SCCU) champion for the 1956-57, 1957-58 and 1964-65 seasons.
From the Preface of The World Chess Championship : 1951 by Lionel Sharples Penrose we have :
“Mr. Wade is also passionately devoted to the game. Before coming to Europe, he was three times champion of New Zealand. He had played in tournaments in England but his chief successes have been on the Continent. At Venice in 1950, he obtained a high place in a very severe contest in which some of the strongest Russia, Czech, Dutch, French, Italian, North and South American players took part. Much of his time is occupied in chess organising and teaching. He is an acting vice-president of the F.I.D.É and in this official capacity he attended the match in Moscow, which is the subject of this book.”
IM Bob Wade
Paul McKeown researched (and Simon Spivack asked permission to reproduce his words) the earliest part of Bob’s life as follows:
“On May 20th, 1919, Thomas Graham Wade, aged 27, Sergeant in the NZ Expeditionary Force, repatriated with honour from war-time service in Egypt, Gallipoli and France, married Amy Lilian Neave, aged 21, in South Dunedin. A New Zealander of Scots and English descent, his family was Graham from Montrose. The family name, Wade, came from Marshall George Wade, the soldier and engineer who led the Hanoverian forces against the Scots at the time of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion and was immortalised in the original third verse of the British national anthem:
Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,
May by thy mighty aid,
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush and like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush,
God save the King.
IM Bob Wade
Robert Graham Wade, known in the Scots manner to his family as Robin, and later to his many friends as Bob, was their first child, born April 10th, 1921, at Dunedin. Over the next few years he was joined by sisters, Lilian, Agnes, Betty, June, his brother Ted and finally by his youngest sister Amy. The family lived for a number of years at Portobello.

At that time, Portobello was a scattered community of about 150 people with three shops and a pub on the Otago Peninsula. Bob attended Portobello Primary School, a small country school, finished “dux” or top of class, and then attended the King Edward Technical High School at Stuart Street in Dunedin.”
IM Bob Wade
In The Oxford Companion to Chess (OUP, 1984 & 1996), Hooper & Whyld:
“Wade Variation, 147, also known as the Modern Variation, in the Queen’s Gambit Declined, Meran Variation, from Bogoljubow-Wade, Oldenburg, 1949;

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1239 in the French Defence, introduced by Wade in a match against Schmid in 1950.

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Hooper & Whyld go on to write :
“New Zealand-born Robert Graham Wade (1921- ) won the championship of his homeland three times before moving to England as a young man, He won the British Championship twice and trained many English players.”
Aside from the two variations mentioned by Hooper & Whyld there are other Wade Variations :

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which Jim Plaskett dubbed the “Sidestep Variation”
and

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which is the Pytel-Wade Variation of the Scandinavian Defence.
Anne Sunnucks wrote in The Encyclopaedia of Chess (Robert Hale, 1970 & 1976) :
“International Master (1950 Ed: actually 1954), International Judge (1958), New Zealand Champion three times and British Champion in 1952 and 1970.
Bob Wade was born in New Zealand on 10th April 1921 and is a professional chess player. He has lived in England for many years and has played regularly for the British Chess Federation team in Chess Olympiads. He has played a prominent part in coaching schemes for juniors and is largely responsible for recent successes of English juniors in international events.
Bob Wade v. Aldecoa of the Philippines from the 1958 Munich Olympiad played on October 9th 1958. The game was won by Bob in 60 moves. From the collection of David Jarrett with many thanks.
He is chess correspondent of Associated Newspapers and Independent Television News and editor of a series of books on Contemporary Chess Openings published by Batsford.
Author of a number of books on the game, his publications include books on the World Championship of 1951, 1957 (ed : this book was, in fact, by Golombek) and 1963, the first in collaboration with W. Winter; The Closed Ruy Lopez (Batsford, 1970) in collaboration with LS Blackstock and PJ Booth: World Chess Championship (Batsford, 1972) in collaboration with Svetozar Gligoric; Games of RJ Fischer (Batsford, 1972) in collaboration with KJ O’Connell and Soviet Chess (Neville Spearman, 1968).
Wade was a member of the FIDE Laws Commission from 1950 to 1952.”

From The Encyclopedia of Chess (Batsford, 1977), Harry Golombek OBE :
“International Master who was born at Dunedin, New Zealand, but came to live In England in 1946 and has represented both countries on different occasions. He has nearly always done well in British Championships and won the title in Chester in 1952 and again at Coventry in 1970. He had played for the British Chess Federation at the Olympiads of 1954, 1956, 1958, 1960 and 1962, winning the shortest game of the Varna Olympiad in that year in nine moves against Anton Kinzel of Austria

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He played for the New Zealand team at the 1970 Olympiad at Siegen but returned to the BCF team at Skopje in 1972.
His best individual international results were a fifth place at Venice 1950 and again fifth at the Masters section of the Capablanca Memorial at Cienfuegos in Cuba in 1975. Possessor of a sharp clear-cut style of play, he once drew a match with the West German grandmaster Lothar Schmid with neither side drawing a game, though this was before Schmid received the grandmaster title.

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He has done much valuable work in England teaching the young, and was responsible for the text of a highly successful television series in 1975.
His main books are : Soviet Chess, London, 1967; Botvinnik-Bronstein Match 1951 (in co-operation with W. Winter), London, Toronto 1951; Match Petrosian-Botvinnik, London, 1963; Sousse 1967, The Chess Player, Nottingham, 1968.”
From British Chess (Pergamon Press, 1983) we have this article from George Botterill :
“In the Birthday Honours list of 1979 Bob Wade was awarded the OBE for his services to chess. Few rewards can have been more thoroughly earned. For some reason, Bob has always been held in greater esteem abroad than in the country for which he has done so much. But the many players who have turned to him for advice or who have simply enjoyed his hospitality, which is always ungrudgingly available to fellow chess players, know the measure of his dedication to the game.
Theodore Tylor vs Bob Wade at Paignton 1953. Bob held TT to a draw to secure first place
Wade was born in Dunedin, a third generation New Zealander of Scots and English ancestry. He started a a career as a civil servant in the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Having won the New Zealand Championship in 1944 and 1945 he was sent over to participate in the British Championship of 1946. The result was not exactly a success – a mere 3.5 points out of 11. But Bob was not to be disheartened so easily. Feeling he was capable of better things, he took leave of absence in 1947 and did the circuit, such as it then was, of chess tournament in Europe and North America.
Bob giving a simul in Leeds in the 1950s
When he returned to New Zealand he found that he had been transferred to another department in a civil service reorganisation. The new job was not so congenial. He stuck it out for 6 months – during which time he won the New Zealand Championship for a third time – and then handed in his resignation to take up the precarious life of a chess professional.
IM Bob Wade
Settling in Britain he soon gained the IM title (ed : 1954). But even in those days when still a young man Wade did not concentrate exclusively on his own playing career. In 1949 he went to the FIDE congress and was one of the five people – the others were BH Wood, Ragozin, Zubarev and Rogarde – who collaborated on the writing of the official rules for the game.
Bob Wade OBE, Murray Chandler MNZM and David Anderton OBE at the 1986 Dubai Olympiad. Photograph by Frits Agterdenbos
He also served as a member of the commission that determined who the original holders of international titles would be. When you consider that Wade was also on the 1950 commission that decided the composition of the World Championship Interzonals, it becomes apparent that this man played a significant part in the shaping the structure of modern international chess.
Bob at a CentYMCA event with Neil Carr, Mike Wills, Aaron Rose and Jon Ady
Although rarely at the top in international tournaments, Wade was always a very dangerous player, capable on his day of beating anybody in the world. He won the British Championship twice at Chester in 1952 and at Coventry in 1970.
Bob playing Kick Langeweg at IBM 1961.
In recent years Wade has put his main energies into junior training and organisation and also into his work as the editor of Batsford’s highly productive and extremely successful series of chess books.
Bob with John Nunn and Boris Spassky at the GLC Masters
It is hard to say in what department one should place Wade’s greatest contributions to British Chess. Living through what is retrospect look to have been the Dark Ages of British chess – the 1950s and 1960s – he has demonstrated that even in a social and cultural environment that made playing chess economically ‘impossible’ profession to follow it was still possible to dedicate a life to chess, if one had the determination.
Leonard Barden, Henry Mutkin, Adrian Hollis and Bob Wade observe Nick Ivell vs Ken Regan at the 1983 Varsity match
During those years he was really the only British Player who regularly active in international tournaments. Since then he has been constantly active as an author, editor and adviser, always working to transform Britain into a country more congenial to good chess.
Bob at the demo board at London Central YMCA chess club.
But we suspect that he might regard this role as trainer and coach as the most important thing of all. He is, quite appropriately the British Chess Federation’s Chief National Coach.
Bob doing one of the things he loved best : teaching. He was discussing a position at Havana 1965. Dr JR Capablanca, son of the former world champion, on the right, interpreted.
If one had to choose a single best game from Wade’s whole tournament career, it would probably be this one.
George Botterill

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Dr. Fazekas (left) playing Bob Wade at an Ilford Congress, photographer unknown
In the January 2009 issue of British Chess Magazine John Saunders wrote a ten page obituary as follows :
British Chess Magazine, Volume CXXIX (129, 2009), #1 (January), pp. 34-43
British Chess Magazine, Volume CXXIX (129, 2009), #1 (January), pp. 34-43
British Chess Magazine, Volume CXXIX (129, 2009), #1 (January), pp. 34-43
British Chess Magazine, Volume CXXIX (129, 2009), #1 (January), pp. 34-43
British Chess Magazine, Volume CXXIX (129, 2009), #1 (January), pp. 34-43
British Chess Magazine, Volume CXXIX (129, 2009), #1 (January), pp. 34-43
British Chess Magazine, Volume CXXIX (129, 2009), #1 (January), pp. 34-43
British Chess Magazine, Volume CXXIX (129, 2009), #1 (January), pp. 34-43
British Chess Magazine, Volume CXXIX (129, 2009), #1 (January), pp. 34-43
British Chess Magazine, Volume CXXIX (129, 2009), #1 (January), pp. 34-43
Leonard Barden wrote this obituary
Here is Bob’s Telegraph obituary.
John Saunders interviewed Bob at his Blackheath home and wrote this extensive article for the 1999 British Chess Magazine.
His detailed results in Olympiads, from olimpbase.org, follow.
Amsterdam 1954, England board 4, 6/12 (+4−4=4);
Moscow 1956, England board 3, 6½/14 (+2−3=9);
Munich 1958, England 1st reserve, 7/14 (+5−5=4);
Leipzig 1960, England 2nd reserve, 6/11 (+4−3=4);
Varna 1962, England 2nd reserve, 6/12 (+4−4=4);
Siegen 1970, New Zealand board 2, 9/15 (+7−4=4);
Skopje 1972, England board 3, 7½/14 (+4−3=7).
Wade won several middle-strength Master events in the British Isles: Ilford 1957 and 1968, Paignton 1959, Dublin 1962, and Southend-on-Sea 1965.
Wade was generally no more than a middle-ranking player in strong international tournaments. His other highlights against high-standard international-level competition include:
tied 4–5th at Haifa/Tel Aviv 1958 on 7½/13 (winner Samuel Reshevsky);
3rd at Bognor Regis 1959 on 7/10 (winner Erno Gereben);
5th at Reykjavík 1964 on 7½/13 (winner Mikhail Tal);
tied 4–5th at Málaga 1966 on 7/11; (winners Alberic O’Kelly de Galway and Eleazar Jiménez);
6th at Briseck 1971 on 7/13 (winner Gideon Barcza);
5th at Cienfuegos ‘B’ 1975 on 10/17; (winners Julio Boudy and Amador Rodriguez);
tied 7–12th in the World Senior Championship, Bad Woerishofen 1992, on 7½/11 (winner Efim Geller).
Wade was the only British player to have faced Bobby Fischer in tournament play (outside of Olympiads). They met three times, with Wade drawing one game and losing the other two.
His detailed Wikipedia entry may be found here
Bob was an active author and wrote (or co-wrote) around 22 books as follows :
The World Chess Championship, W.Winter & RG Wade, Turnstille Press, 1951
Hastings Chess Congress 1955-56, RG Wade & W. Ritson Morry, En Passant Chess Publications
Chess Tactics for Beginners, RG Wade, Bott and Morrison, 1960
The World Chess Championship: 1963 Botvinnik vs Petrosian, Wade
Soviet Chess, RG Wade, Neville Spearman (UK) & David McKay Company, Inc, New York, 1968
Sousse 1967 : International Chess Tournament, RG Wade, The Chess Player, 1968
The Velimirovic Attack, Sozin Sicilian, TD Harding and RG Wade, Chessman Publications Ltd., 1969.
The Closed Ruy Lopez, Wade, Blackstock and Booth, Batsford, 1970
Palma 1970 : Interzonal Chess Tournament, RG Wade and LS Blackstock, The Chess Player, 1970
The Games of Robert J. Fischer, Robert Wade and O’Connell, Batsford 1972, 2nd ed. 1972, reprinted 1973, First limp edition 1981, Reprinted 1985, 1981, 1989, Second edition (The Complete Games of Bobby Fischer) 1992
World Championship Interzonals, Wade, Blackstock and Kotov, Batsford, 1974
The World Chess Championship, Gligoric and Wade, Batsford, 1974
The Marshall Attack, Wade & Harding, Batsford, 1974
Playing Chess, RG Wade, Batsford/TVTimes, 1974
Sicilian Lasker-Pelikan, 1978, Batsford, Wade, Speelman, Povah and Blackstock
44th USSR Championship Final Moscow 1977, RG Wade, LS Blackstock and HC Thomas, Master Chess Publications, 1977
45th USSR Championship Final Leningrad 1977, RG Wade, LS Blackstock and HC Thomas, Master Chess Publications, 1977
Bugojno, 1978, RG Wade, LS Blackstock and HC Thomas, Master Chess Publications, 1978
46th USSR Chess Championships 1978, RD Keene, JDM Nunn, RG Wade, Master Chess Publications, 1978, ISBN 0 906634 00 8
Tournament of the Stars:~ Montreal 1979, RG Wade, LS Blackstock, AL Hosking, Master Chess Publications, 1979
Interpolis Supertournament:~ Tilburg 1979, LS Blackstock & RG Wade, Master Chess Publications, Chess, Sutton Coldfield, 1979
Fighting Chess, Kasparov and Wade, Harper Collins, 1983
Trends in the Reti, Volume 1, RG Wade, 1992
Batsford Chess Endings, Speelman, Tisdall and Wade, 1993
Chess for Children, Ted Nottingham and Bob Wade, Sterling Juvenile, 1996
Trends in the Reti, Volume 2, RG Wade, 1996
Winning Chess : Tactics and Strategies, Sterling Juvenile, 2001
In 2007 Ray Cannon published the following tribute :
Bob Wade : Tribute to a Chess Master, Ray Cannon & Ray Keene, Impala, 2007
However, Paul McKeown remains Bob’s official biographer.
IM Robert Wade OBE
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Birthday of GM Simon Williams (30-xi-1979)
2020-11-30
GM Simon Williams
Best wishes to GM Simon Williams on his fortieth birthday, this day (November 30th) in 1979.
Simon was Southern Counties (SCCU) champion in the 2001-02 (shared with Simon Knott) and the 2006-07 season.
His Wikipedia entry is here
GM Simon Williams
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Birthday of IM Gavin Wall (05-xii-1968)
2020-12-05
Best Wishes to IM Gavin Wall on this birthday, this day (December 5th) in 1968. Gavin is an Irish International Master whose peak rating (according to Chessbase) was 2413 at the age of 35.
IM Gavin Wall

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IM Gavin Wall
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Birthday of IM John Hawksworth (06-xii-1963)
2020-12-06
We wish happy birthday to IM John Hawksworth born on Friday, December 6th, 1963.
John Crofton Hawksworth was “born in Brighton, England, in December 1963 to Robert Marshall Hawksworth and Norah Connor Hawksworth née Crofton. He was baptised at St Saviour’s Church of England church in Pimlico, London, in 1964.[1]”
This was written about John who was 15 just prior to the Spassky vs the BCF Junior Squad simultaneous display in 1979 :
“Bradford Grammar and Bradford. Rating 194. Yorkshire under-18 champion.”
He was awarded the IM title in 1986.
According to ChessBase his highest FIDE rating was 2370 in January, 1990 aged 27 which was the last year of serious competition at the 77th British Championships in Eastbourne.
He then pursued a highly successful career in the financial sector and is currently the Chief Economist for PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
IM John Crofton Hawksworth (standing,far left)

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IM John Crofton Hawksworth (standing, second from right)
At the Lloyds Bank Masters : Front (l-r) : Joel Benjamin, Ian Wells, Rear : Peter Morrish, Stewart Reuben, Richard Beville, Gary Senior, Richard Webb, John Hawksworth, Andrew King, Nigel Short, Mark Ginsburg, Daniel King, David Cummings, Erik Teichmann, John Brandford and Micheal Pagden
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Birthday of WGM Dr. Jana Bellin (09-xii-1947)
2020-12-09
Happy birthday WGM Dr. Jana Bellin on this day (December 9th) in 1947.
Jana Malypetrova
From The Encyclopedia of Chess (Robert Hale, 1970 & 1976), Anne Sunnucks :
“International Woman Master (1969), Czech Woman Champion in 1965 and 1967 and British Woman Champion since 1970.
Jana Malypetrova
Jana was born in Prague on the 9th December 1947 and learned to play chess at the age of eleven. She made her first appearance in the international field when she played 2nd board for Czechoslovakia in Women’s Chess Olympiad in Oberhausen in 1966. In the same year she represented Czechoslovakia in the Zonal tournament at Varna and came 11th.
Jana Malypetrova
She is now married to the British International Master, William Hartston, and played 1st board for England in the Women’s Chess Olympiad in Skopje in 1972 and represented England in the Zonal tournament in Wijk aan Zee in 1973 in which she tied for 1st place. In the same year she came =6th in the Interzonal Tournament. She is a doctor.”
Jana & Bill Hartston celebrate a family double at the British Championships in 1973 at Eastbourne
From The Encyclopedia of Chess (Batsford, 1977), Harry Golombek OBE :
“Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, but moved to England in 1970 after her marriage to WR Hartston. Czechoslovak Woman champion in 1965 and 1967 (under her maiden name of Malypetrova) and British Ladies champion in the five years 1970 to 1974. International Woman master since 1969.”
Bill and Jana Hartston are shown with some of their many chess sets. CHESS, August 1973, page 323
From British Chess (Pergamon Press, 1983) Botterill, Levy, Rice and Richardson :
Hastings International Chess Congress 21 year old Jana Malypetrova From Czechoslovakia And Vassily Smyslov From Russia. Mandatory Credit: Photo by Michael Fresco/ANL/Shutterstock (1876232a)
“Jana Miles was born 9 December 1947 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She moved to England when she married Bill Hartston. Divorced from Hartston in 1978, she subsequently married Tony Miles.
Hastings International Chess Congress 21 year old Jana Malypetrova From Czechoslovakia And Vassily Smyslov From Russia. Mandatory Credit: Photo by Michael Fresco/ANL/Shutterstock (1876232a)
She was Czech woman champion in 1965 and 1967 and has regularly been the British Ladies Champion since moving to this country. She is a doctor of medicine.”
Bill and Dr, Jana Hartston (née Malypetrova)

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Sir Philip Stuart Milner-Barry OBE presents Dr. Jana Hartston with the ? prize
From Wikipedia :
“Jana Bellin (née Malypetrová; born 9 December 1947) is a British, formerly Czechoslovak chess player. She was awarded the Woman International Master chess title in 1969 and the Woman Grandmaster title in 1982.
Moment of concentration for reigning women’s champion of Great Britain Jana Hartston and some of the 30 Post Officer players – all men who challenged her at postal headquarters London on September 6. Jana beat seven, drew with sixteen and lost to seven.
Bellin was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She was the Czech Women’s Champion in 1965 and 1967 under her maiden name of Malypetrová. After her marriage to William Hartston she moved to England in 1970 and won the British Women’s Championship in 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977 (after a play-off), and 1979.
Moment of concentration for reigning women’s champion of Great Britain Jana Hartston and some of the 30 Post Officer players – all men who challenged her at postal headquarters London on September 6. Jana beat seven, drew with sixteen and lost to seven.
She has fifteen appearances in the Women’s Chess Olympiads, representing Czechoslovakia in 1966 and 1969 and England thirteen times from 1972 through 2006, seven times on first board.
Moment of concentration for reigning women’s champion of Great Britain Jana Hartston and some of the 30 Post Officer players – all men who challenged her at postal headquarters London on September 6. Jana beat seven, drew with sixteen and lost to seven.
At the Olympiad she earned individual silver medals in 1966 and 1976, a team bronze medal in 1968 with the Czechoslovakian team, and a team silver in 1976 with England.
British Speed Chess Championship Grandmaster Nigel Short Playing Chess In The Park With L-r Susan Arkell Sheila Jackson And Dr Jana Miles. Courtesy of Shutterstock

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“Bellin is a medical doctor specialising in anaesthetics, and works in intensive care at Sandwell General Hospital, West Bromwich, England.
Jana with Sheila Jackson to her left
She is also Chairman of the FIDE Medical Commission, which supervises drug testing of chess players.
British Speed Chess Championship Grandmaster Nigel Short Playing Chess In The Street With Woman Grandmaster Dr Jana Miles : Credit : Shutterstock
Bellin was married first to International Master William Hartston, then to Grandmaster Tony Miles, and after that to International Master Robert Bellin. She and Bellin have two sons: Robert (born 1988) and Christopher (born 1991).[citation needed]
Dr. Jana Bellin
She is the granddaughter of thrice Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, Jan Malypetr. and cousin of author and human rights campaigner Jiří Stránský.
WGM Dr. Jana Bellin, Courtesy of John Upham Photography
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Death Anniversary of FM Peter Clarke (18-iii-1933 11-xii-2014)
2020-12-11
PH Clarke
We remember FM Peter Clarke who passed away on Thursday, December 11th, 2014 whilst living at Chapel House, Bude, Cornwall, EX23 9SQ
Peter Hugh Clarke was born on Saturday, March 18th 1933 in West Ham, London. His mother’s maiden name was Ekblom.
From The Modest Master of Morwenstow by James Pratt (sadly, as yet, unpublished) :
“Peter Hugh Clarke was born in London on 18th March, 1933. At the age of eight or nine he taught himself the game from ‘The Book of Knowledge’ and played friendly games with his cousin, who was about a year older. Peter’s father supported his game for many years. PHC was a student at St. Bonaventures School and London University. World War II, and its even longer aftermath, robbed him of a number of playing opportunities. It is surprising that he had no childhood heroes, although later the play of Botvinnik, Keres and Smyslov impressed him.”
Peter Clarke with father, Courtesy of Keverel Chess
From British Chess (Pergamon, 1983) written by George Botterill :
Chess correspondent of The Sunday Times, Clarke played for England in the Olympiads of 1954, 56, 58, 60, 62, 66 and 68. He has never won the British Championship but has come 2nd on 5 occasions.
A fine writer. His best books are Mikhail Tal’s Best Games of Chess
Mikhail Tal’s Best Games of Chess, PH Clarke, Bell, 1961
and Petrosian’s Best Games of Chess 1946-1963 both published by Bell.
Petrosian’s Best Games of Chess 1946-1963, PH Clarke, George Bell & Sons Ltd, 1964
The most remarkable thing about Clarke’s chess career was they way in which he became transformed, in about 1968-9, into the most drawish of players. In British tournaments he has become notorious for correct but dull solidity.”
Peter was Southern Counties (SCCU) Champion for the 1945-55 season.
Peter was England’s third Correspondence Grandmaster (CGM) in 1980 after Keith Richardson and Adrian Hollis.
Peter at the dinner table
From BCM / ECF :
“FIDE and British Master P.H. Clarke will be best remembered as biographer to Tal and to Petrosyan, but he was so much more. The young Clarke played for Ilford CC in the London League and for Essex at county level. Doing national service he was to learn the Russian that was to so shape his writings.
The 1964 England Olympiad (Tel Aviv) Team : Owen Hindle, Čeněk Kottnauer, Peter Clarke, Michael Franklin, Norman Littlewood & Michael Haygarth
For a brief period in the late 1950s, and early sixties, he was the number two player in England, ahead of the vastly more experienced Alexander and Golombek. He played, of course, below Jonathan Penrose, a partnership that bore fruit when preparing openings; latterly they both became Correspondence Grandmasters.”
Peter Clarke at the 1963 Ilford Whitsun Congress. Source : British Chess Magazine, Volume LXXXIII, Number 7 (July), page 194

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FM Peter Clarke
“At the British Championships itself he finished second on his first appearance; he was to tie for silver medal on no less than five occasions, appearing, almost without a break for thirty years, a run that ended in 1982. He represented the BCF – as it then was – in eight Olympiads, playing on top board in 1966.
Borislav Ivkov playing Peter Clarke at the 1960 Leipzig Olympiad. The game was a QGA which was drawn
The Clarke family moved to the West of England in the late Sixties. PHC played in thirteen WECU Championships, and lost only twice. As a player he could be cautious, agreeing too readily to draws. Accuracy and respect meant more to him than ambition. The biographer became a journalist as illness cut short his playing career. In his time he beat Larsen, Penrose and Szabo.

In 1962 he married BH Wood’s daughter, Peggy. They had three daughters. In 1975 my mother happened across Peter and Peggy on Morecambe prom. ‘Never’ she was later to tell me, ‘have I seen a couple more in love.'”
Peter Clarke & Peggy Wood in 1962, Courtesy of Keverel Chess
We are grateful to James Pratt to allow us to quote from the the sadly unpublished “Modest Master from Morwenstow” as follows :
PHC by John Littlewood :
“Peter had a relatively short career at the top and it is interesting to comment on his style. In essence, his great strength lay in positional understanding which backed-up his defensive skills rather than helped his ability to create wins; in other words, he won games in which his opponents over-pressed or opted for dubious positional moves.
After doing well in English chess, he was perhaps pushed into international chess too early for him to develop his own personal creative style. Playing for England and meeting strong players, he tended towards a rather negative approach that may have been necessary for the team but was not good for his own personal progress, as shown when he later met English opponents who outstripped him in their positive will-to-win. His friendship with Penrose (a far stronger player) led to far too many draws which did neither of them any good.
Mikhail Tal’s Best Games of Chess, PH Clarke. Bell, 1961
To be fair, Peter was not an easy player to beat but, on the other hand, he was not too hard to draw against if you felt so inclined. His forte lay in his knowledge of the game and his excellent writing skills, where he was at his happiest; there is hardly a book of his that I haven’t enjoyed.”
Petrosian’s Best Games of Chess 1946-1963, PH Clarke, Bell, 1971
Writing in BCM 04/64, John Littlewood called PHC a self-style non-tactician and disagreed with Clarke’s belief in the inner logic (‘I have made no mistakes and therefore my position is OK.’) of positions where tactics are to the fore.
FM Peter Clarke
PHC by Leonard Barden :
“Peter’s contribution to British Chess was important as a player and even more so as a writer. His best period was 1956-61. He, Penrose and myself used to stay in the same hotel during the British Championships and prepare and analyse together, although we played hard when actually paired. Peter was the solid man in the English team, gradually taking over the role of Golombek. It was important that we did reasonably well in this period which provided a bridge between the Alexander/Golombek era and the rise of Keene/Hartston.
Peter was always a good friend to me and his family gave me hospitality each year during the Ilford Congress. Peter’s books, especially the one about Tal, were real works of scholarship in an era where there were no computers to facilitate the job. He could have achieved more as a player if he had been able to concentrate fully on that, but the economic climate then was poor for professionals.”
Peter and life long friend, Jonathan Penrose, Courtesy of Keverel Chess
PHC by Bernard Cafferty :
“Right up to that point of his illness in the 1980’s he had worthily defended the reputation of the older generation in the British Championship, as the last survivor, still active at that level, from the Penrose era. I first saw Peter at the 1951 British Championship at Chester and first played him at the 1952 Bristol Universities individual contest.
24th USSR Chess Championships, PH Clarke, British Chess Magazine, 1959
He left the University of London before taking his degree (study of chess rather taking over his life), but then had the good fortune to go on to study Russian while doing his National Service, around 1954-55. Or was he still in the Army when the Moscow 1956 Olympiad took place? He certainly did well there, perhaps less affected than other Westerners by the strangeness of the place that was just recovering slightly from the depths of Stalin’s baleful influence.

VV Smyslov – My Best Games of Chess, edited and translated by PH Clarke, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958
I do recall that for a couple of years Peter changed his cautious style. This was around 1957-58 when he scored one of his two wins against Penrose. Was it at Ilford? I remember that the game appeared with notes by B.H. Wood in ‘The Illustrated London News’ column.
Cien Miniaturas Rusas

I used to see Peter regularly at the Paignton and Hastings Congresses in the 1990’s but not in the last couple of years. His health seems restored.”
Peter with Brian Reilly observing playing ? with ? in the background.
PHC by Ken Harman :
“I am very pleased to hear about your book about Peter Clarke; not sure I can contribute much as I wasn’t a friend of his so only knew him through seeing him and Margaret at chess tournaments. He was a quiet spoken gentleman who played such quiet positional chess that I would call it ‘monastic chess’. I think Clarke thought chess a search for spiritual truth, only to be found in the cloisters of spiritual truth, only to be found in the cloisters of contemplative life – ‘The Thomas Merton of Chess’, if you like. Of course, I have no idea if he was a spiritual man in real life but his chess always struck me as if he was reaching for heaven and found hell in a doubled pawn. He seemed like a nice man and I suspect his wife Margaret was the dominant one. I have his book on Mikhail Tal’s Best Games of Chess (Bell 1961) which is signed by him and may well have been his copy, because as you open the book – there is a small newspaper clipping and a photo of Clarke sellotaped which is rather unusual being that the book is about Tal, and not him. ”
Peter plays Erich Gottlieb Eliskases at the 1960 Leipzig Olympiad
PHC by Alan P. Borwell (ICCF Honorary President) :
“I first met Peter at the 1959 BCF Congress in York when I was a member of local organising committee and then at Paignton and when York played & won the National Club Championship in 1964/5.
In 1966 I played Peter in the British Chess Championship in last round in Sunderland.”
Peter analyses “al fresco” with ?. Possibly from Hastings ?
and from Wikipedia :
Peter Hugh Clarke (18 March 1933 – 11 December 2014) was an English chess player, who hold titles FIDE master (FM) and International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster (1980), FIDE International arbiter (1976), Chess Olympiad individual silver medal winner (1956).
Peter Clarke started playing chess at the age of six. He twice won the London Boys’ Chess Championship (1950, 1951). He was British Chess Championship multiplier participant where five times won silver medal.
Since 1959, Peter Hugh Clarke has been working as a chess journalist in the newspaper Sunday Times and magazine British Chess Magazine. He known as the biographical book’s author of Mikhail Tal (1961) and Tigran Petrosian (1964). Thanks to his good knowledge of Russian language, he translated the book about Vasily Smyslov in 1958. In 1963 he wrote a book 100 Soviet Chess Miniatures.
Peter Clarke played for England in the Chess Olympiads :
In 1954, at second reserve board in the 11th Chess Olympiad in Amsterdam (+2, =2, -3),
In 1956, at reserve board in the 12th Chess Olympiad in Moscow (+7, =5, -0) and won individual silver medal,
In 1958, at fourth board in the 13th Chess Olympiad in Munich (+2, =10, -3),
In 1960, at third board in the 14th Chess Olympiad in Leipzig (+4, =7, -3),
In 1962, at second board in the 15th Chess Olympiad in Varna (+3, =10, -2),
In 1964, at second board in the 16th Chess Olympiad in Tel Aviv (+2, =8, -2),
In 1966, at first board in the 17th Chess Olympiad in Havana (+2, =10, -1),
In 1968, at third board in the 18th Chess Olympiad in Lugano (+0, =7, -1).
Also he played for England in the World Student Team Chess Championship (1954, 1959)and in the Clare Benedict Chess Cup (1960-1961, 1963, 1965, 1967-1968) where won team silver medal (1960) and 4 bronze medals (1961, 1963, 1967, 1968).
In later years, Peter Clarke active participated in correspondence chess tournaments. In 1977, he won British Correspondence Chess Championship. In 1976, Peter Clarke was awarded the International Correspondence Chess Master (IMC) title and received the International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster (GMC) title four years later.
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Birthday of GM Gawain Jones (11-xii-1987)
2020-12-11
Birthday of GM Gawain Christopher B Jones (11-xii-1987)
Gawain was Southern Counties (SCCU) champion for the 2012-13 season.
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Death Anniversary of Richard Griffith (22-vii-1872 11-xii-1955)
2020-12-11
Death Anniversary of Richard Griffith (22-vii-1872 11-xii-1955)
See Chess World, Volume 11, Number 6, June 1956, page 128.
Here is his Wikipedia entry.
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Birthday of IM Brandon Clarke (14-xii-1995)
2020-12-14
Happy Birthday Wishes to IM Brandon George I Clarke born on this day (December 14th), 1995. “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson was the UK Number One single.
In the 2003 London Junior Championships he was =13 with 4/7
In July 2004 he secured his first published standard play grading of 84D and 62D for rapid play. His first recorded rapid play tournament was on the 4th of October 2003 being the Mini Squad Under 8s. In this event he beat a certain Jamie Horton who had a grading of 45D at the time.
In 2006 Brandon won outright the London Under 12 title with 7.5/9. Marcus Harvey was a runner-up. This situation was repeated one year later.
In 2009 Brandon won the LJCC Under-16 title this time with Akash Jain as runner-up. His TPR for a score of 5/6 was 199.
Brandon was a chess scholar at Wellington College, Berkshire and was part of the strongest school / college team to play in the National Schools competition for many years that included James Holland, Felix Jose Ynojosa-Aponte, Alexander Galliano, Latefah Meesam-Sparkes, Akash Jain, Adrian Archer-Lock and latterly William Foo and Richard Zhu. Despite being easily the strongest team they were denied the title by the antiquated age handicapping rules.
FIDE rating profile for Brandon Clarke according to MegaBase 2020
He became an International Master in early 2019 and plays much chess in Australia, New Zealand and England having lived in the USA for some time after leaving Wellington College.
Aged 24 Brandon has achieved his highest FIDE rating of 2445 and it shows every sign of increasing.
IM Brandon Clarke, British Championships (Major Open), Torquay 2019, Courtesy of John Upham Photography
With the White pieces Brandon is almost exclusively an e4 player with occasional forays with the Queen’s pawn. Against the Najdorf he prefers 6.Bg5 and allows the Marshall against the Ruy Lopez.
As the second player he plays the Najdorf and the King’s Indian Defence most of the time.
Brandon has his own YouTube Channel.
On Chess.com he plays under the handle of Biranidun with a blitz rating of 2847.

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In January 2019 Brandon scored a very impressive victory in the 126th (!) New Zealand Open. “The 2019 126th New Zealand Open is part of the 126th New Zealand Congress and is a 9-round Swiss event being held at the Waipuna Conference Centre in Auckland from 14-22 January 2019.”
Cross table from the 126h New Zealand Open
Brandon made a welcome return to the UK and comfortably won the 2019 Major Open in Torquay with 8.5/9 as an IM.
Brandon plays for Australia Kangaroos in the Pro Chess League.
The ECF grading web site shows his only club to be Littlethorpe (in Leicestershire) although Brandon played for Warwickshire Select in the Four Nations Chess League (4NCL).
IM Brandon Clarke, British Championships (Major Open), Torquay 2019, Courtesy of John Upham Photography
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