John Roycroft
(from left to right) at the PCCC conference 1990 in Benidorm (Spain)
Arthur John Roycroft (born July 15, 1929 in Alperton , England ) is an English chess player , author and study composer .
Roycroft was until his retirement at the company for 26 years , IBM hired in England, then joined the group Machine Intelligence by Donald Michie at the University of Edinburgh in.
Since 1950 he has composed over 40 studies, inspired by meetings with Harold Lommer and Hugh Blandford . Three of them made it onto FIDE albums . Inspired by the ransom competition for endgame studies in the weekly chess column of the New Statesman and several radio broadcasts on endgame studies at the BBC, a loose community of interests formed around him, which led to the establishment of The Chess Endgame Study Circle . From July 1964, the quarterly newspaper EG appeared , and he became its editor and publisher.
Roycroft's merits lie less in his compositions than in the extensive popularization of the chess study . In 1959 he became international referee for chess compositions (studies). In the 1970s he set a relative end in the further development of the GBR code . Roycroft is a founding member of the PCCC's subcommittee on studies , formed on the initiative of Gia Nadareishvili and of which he was long-time spokesman.
His book Test Tube Chess (revised as The Chess Endgame Study , 1981) is unique . In the chapter "Cook Hunter: Friend or Fiend with Microscope" the dialectic of the activities between composer and solver, between synthesis and analysis in chess composition is convincingly and vividly described.
Less known is his part in the development of the 5-figure endgame databases together with Ken Thompson , whose technical advisor he was. On a chess course in 1988 at the TU Dresden , he reported about it in words and pictures. Long before the time was ripe to disseminate these results on CD, Roycroft tried to publish some of the new knowledge they had gained in the queens final as brochures. Of the 38 planned editions of Roycroft's 5-man Chess Endgame Series , only three appeared. The project did not find enough sales and was a financial flop.
At the World Congress of Chess Composition (WCCC) in 2016, Roycroft was awarded the title of Honorary Master of the FIDE for Chess Compositions by the WFCC .
Works (selection)
Chess:
- John Roycroft: Test Tube Chess , Faber and Faber Limited, 1972, ISBN 0-571-09573-9
- John Roycroft: Queen and Pawn on a2 against Queen , Chess Endgame Consultants and Publishers, April 1986, ISBN 1-869874-00-5
- John Roycroft: Queen and Pawn on a6 against Queen , Chess Endgame Consultants and Publishers, May 1986, ISBN 1-869874-05-6
- John Roycroft: Queen and Pawn on b7 against Queen , Chess Endgame Consultants and Publishers, June 1986, ISBN 1-869874-10-2
- John Roycroft: Richard Guy's Chess Endgame Studies . Prime Actions, Kenneth Solja, Helsinki, 1996. ISBN 951-96771-3-5
- John Roycroft (Ed.): Hugh Blandford: Published Works & Notebooks. Russell Enterprises. 1998, ISBN 1-888690-03-8
Fiction:
- John Roycroft: War on the Drakensberg . New Generation Publishing, 2015. ISBN 1785074490
Web links
- John Roycroft presents the study of the year at the 52nd PCCC Congress 2009 in Rio de Janeiro ( Memento of April 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- Compositions by John Roycroft on the PDB server
- John Roycroft on the BDS website
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Roycroft, John |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Roycroft, Arthur John |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English chess player, author and composer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 15, 1929 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Alperton , England , UK |