Barry Sandercock

[Ken Norman]

Barry Sandercock died peacefully yesterday 21st February 2023 at home after a long illness. He was 92 years old.

After he retired Barry became a very active tournament player. He travelled all over England playing as far north as Grange over sands.

He was a regular player at Paignton, Guernsey, Hastings and Amersham. He also played five times in the Isle of Man.

He seemed to find a weekend tournament to enter most weekends. He played abroad several times including Greece and Bregenz in Austria.

He was a very cheerful person and well liked by his many friends. He will be greatly missed.

0ur sympathy goes to ANN his wife of 68 years and his daughter KAY and son-in-law MATT.

[MJMcCready]

R.I.P Barry, a good fellow.

[John Upham]

Here is Barry at the Amersham Congress 2012, May 18th - 20th

i-NQhPHBX-X2.jpg

[John Townsend]

My score-books have a game against E. B. Sandercock, Berks. v. Bucks., 27 March 1971. The "E." stands for Edward. The face in John's photo is familiar. R.I.P.

[Kevin Thurlow]

That is sad - Barry was always friendly and cheerful. Sympathy to his friends and family.

[Roger de Coverly]

Barry was representing Bucks in the SCCU county competitions in the 1970s and probably before that. On the forum he contributed memories from the 1940s and 1950s. One of his bigger scalps was a win against John Littlewood. I think it may have been a British Seniors Championship, but may just have been a side event.
(edit) Found it. It was at the 2006 British in Swansea and in the Week 1 am Open (/edit)

I first played him in 1969 at the Marlow Congress. It was a rather uneventful draw. Later he worked for Rank Xerox in the late 1980s when their HQ was in Marlow.

As Ken said, he was a Congress regular. His last tournament would have been the 2019 Paignton.

[John Saunders]

That's very sad news. (Many thanks to Ken for posting it.)

Barry was one of the nicest people you could ever wish to meet. Like Roger, I remember playing alongside him in the Bucks county team of the late 1960s. In recent years I used to see him in the Isle of Man and always wanted to take him for a trip down memory lane. Despite being a couple of decades older than me, Barry was younger at heart and was rather more focused on chess in the present, but he always humoured me with a story or two from the past. Eventually I persuaded him to share a few games which I posted at BritBase...

https://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/pgn/s ... iewer.html

... including the win against John Littlewood mentioned by Roger. The other games were from simuls: a loss to Gligoric, but wins against Penrose and Milner-Barry, and draws with Golombek, Nigel Davies and David Howell.

[John Upham]

and here is a photo of Barry from the same Amersham Congress:

i-DpfvJRJ-X2.jpg

[John Townsend]

Ah, yes. He looks more alert in the second photo. He's moving in for the kill ..

[Matt Mackenzie]

Of course most will know, but since it hasn't been pointed out yet I will note that he was also a member of this forum.

(1356 posts, the last in March 2019)

[David Gilbert]

A great man. A gentle man. A lovely man. But as you'll see from the position beneath, he also reserved the right to employ the occasional double-cross!

Barry came to Kos for the ACO Amateurs in 2018 with his wife, daughter & son-in-law - a 90th birthday family treat. He got off to a flying start and was one of the section leaders after four rounds, but maybe time was catching-up and he finished in mid-table. He still had a fantastic time. He was playing chess after all, but apart from that he loved sitting down with his family and chatting about anything other than chess.

But as I said above, he wasn't adverse to the occasional con. Here's one of my favourite endings ever, ever, ever, primarily because of the reaction of his opponent. It comes from the e2e4 Diamond Jubilee Congress in 2012, I think at Gatwick, and it's Barry, as Black to play. Oh, and he's completely lost at this point:

[Event "e2e4 London Diamond "] [Site "Gatwick"] [Date "2012.06.03"] [Round "2"] [White "MacDonlad, John"] [Black "Sandercock. Barry"] [Result "*"] [FEN "3k4/1R6/8/5BPK/7P/6r1/4R3/6r1 b - - 0 1"] [SetUp "1"] [WhiteElo "1664"] 1...Rxg5+ 2.hxg5 Rxg5+ 3.Kxg5 * 68...Rxg5+ 69.hxg5 Rxg5+ 70.Kxg5 (of course MacDonald arrogantly takes the second rook without hesitation). Stalemate! Barry holds out his hand for a full minute but MacDonald ignores it and refuses to shake hands. MacDonald turns and walks away without so much as a how-do-you-do but two minutes later is led back to the board by Alex Holowczak to grudgingly sign scoresheets and reset the pieces. MacDonald wasn't a happy man at the best of times, this was full on blues, double-wide. Barry and I saw the funnier side!

[Nigel White]

I played Barry Sandercock in the first round of the U1900 tournament of the most recent British that I did in 2019 in Torquay. In the same tournament, in the last round, I played Gary Hewitt, who this forum also recently reported as having died. Sadly, it seems that so many of my pre-pandemic opponents are no longer with us.

[John Upham]

I was curious to see if EBS had played any D00 openings. Most of them were Colle Systems. However, I was delighted to find one of these:

[Event "East Devon Major op"] [Site "Devon"] [Date "1999.??.??"] [Round "5"] [White "Sandercock, E Barry"] [Black "Price, CR."] [Result "1/2-1/2"] [ECO "D00"] [Annotator "johnu"] [PlyCount "164"] [EventDate "1999.??.??"] [EventType "swiss"] [EventRounds "5"] [EventCountry "ENG"] [SourceTitle "EXT 2000"] [Source "ChessBase"] [SourceDate "1999.11.16"] [SourceVersion "1"] [SourceVersionDate "1999.11.16"] [SourceQuality "1"] {[%evp 0,164,51,19,32,33,49,48,43,39,36,36,49,44,48,39,38,9,34,34,26,34,30,15,30,53,51,3,14,-1,0,3,23,47,50,26,51,44,53,33,58,35,40,30,43,22,30,-92,-38,-79,-87,-97,-93,-92,-99,-99,-85,-89,-85,-91,-82,-80,-80,-78,-74,-99,13,12,23,22,29,25,30,24,24,25,25,24,24,41,48,46,45,0,0,0,0,0,0,-3,-2,-34,-42,-99,-43,-69,-82,-112,-98,-101,0,-80,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,14,14,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,33,0,0,0,0,-41,-54,-44,-44,-40,-33,-33,-33,-33,-33,-33,-12,-12,0,-10,-11,-10,-10,-11,-8,-33,-33,-33,-33,-33,-33,-33,-33,-33,0,-33,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]} 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4. Bf4 Bg7 5. e3 c6 6. Be2 Nbd7 7. h4 {[#]} ({Relevant:} 7. Ne5 a5 8. h4 h5 9. Qd2 Ne4 10. Nxe4 dxe4 11. Nxd7 Bxd7 12. O-O-O Be6 13. Kb1 Qd7 14. f3 Bf5 15. Rhg1 a4 16. a3 Bf6 17. Be5 Bxe5 18. dxe5 Qxd2 19. Rxd2 exf3 20. gxf3 Rd8 21. Rxd8+ Kxd8 22. Kc1 Kc7 23. e4 Be6 24. Kd2 b5 25. f4 Bd7 26. c4 Kb6 27. Kc3 Be6 28. Rg5 Rd8 29. f5 Bxc4 30. Bxc4 bxc4 31. e6 f6 32. Rxg6 Kc5 33. Rg3 Rb8 34. Rg7 Rb3+ 35. Kc2 Kd6 36. Rh7 Re3 {½-½ Cramling,P (2520)-Xie,J (2495) Candidates (Women) Groningen 1997 (15)}) 7... h6 $146 ({Predecessor:} 7... Qb6 8. Rb1 h6 9. Kf1 Nf8 10. b4 Ne6 11. Ne5 Nxf4 12. exf4 Qc7 13. Bf3 Be6 14. Qe2 Qd6 15. Na4 b6 16. c4 Bf5 17. Rc1 O-O 18. c5 bxc5 19. Nxc5 h5 20. g3 Rfb8 21. Qd2 Rb5 22. Kg2 Nd7 23. a4 Rbb8 24. Ncxd7 Bxd7 25. Rc5 e6 26. Rhc1 Be8 27. Nxc6 Bxc6 28. Rxc6 Qe7 29. b5 Qa3 30. f5 exf5 31. Bxd5 Rd8 32. R6c3 Qxa4 33. Bxa8 Rxa8 34. Rc8+ Rxc8 35. Rxc8+ Kh7 36. d5 Qxb5 37. Rc7 {1-0 Mollah Abdullah,A (2350)-Khamrakulov,I (2315) Wch U20 37th Calicut 1998 (13)}) 8. Ne5 Ne4 9. Nxe4 dxe4 10. Nxd7 Bxd7 11. f3 e5 12. dxe5 exf3 13. Bxf3 Qa5+ 14. Qd2 Qxd2+ 15. Kxd2 O-O 16. Rad1 Be6 17. b3 a5 18. a4 Rac8 19. Ke2 Rfe8 20. Rd6 Bf8 21. Rd2 Kh7 22. Be4 Kg8 23. Bd3 Bg4+ 24. Kf2 Bb4 25. c3 Bxc3 26. Rc2 Bxe5 27. Bxh6 Rcd8 28. Bc4 Rd7 29. Rf1 Kh7 30. Bf4 Bf6 31. g3 Bf5 32. Re2 Bd3 33. Rd2 Bxf1 34. Rxd7 Bxc4 35. bxc4 Re7 36. Rxe7 Bxe7 37. Bc7 Bb4 38. e4 f6 39. g4 Bc5+ 40. Kf3 b6 41. g5 fxg5 42. hxg5 Kg7 43. Kf4 Kf7 44. Ke5 Ke7 45. Bb8 Be3 46. Ba7 Bf2 47. Kf4 Ke6 48. Kf3 Bg1 49. Bb8 Bd4 50. Bc7 Kd7 51. Bf4 b5 52. cxb5 cxb5 53. axb5 a4 54. Bc1 Kc7 55. Ke2 Kb6 56. Kd3 Bc5 57. Kc4 a3 58. e5 a2 59. Bb2 Be7 60. Bd4+ Kb7 61. Kb3 Bc5 62. Bc3 Kb6 63. e6 Kxb5 64. Kxa2 Kc6 65. Bf6 Kd6 66. e7 Kd7 67. e8=Q+ Kxe8 68. Kb3 Kd7 69. Kc4 Kc6 70. Kd3 Kd5 71. Bc3 Ba3 72. Bf6 Bc1 73. Ke2 Ke4 74. Kf2 Kf4 75. Be7 Kg4 76. Kg2 Be3 77. Bd8 Kf5 78. Be7 Bd4 79. Kf3 Ke6 80. Bf6 Bxf6 81. gxf6 Kxf6 82. Kf4 g5+ 1/2-1/2

It seemed fitting...

[John Moore]

Sorry to hear this sad news.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Here's one of my favourite endings ever, ever, ever, primarily because of the reaction of his opponent. It comes from the e2e4 Diamond Jubilee Congress in 2012, I think at Gatwick, and it's Barry, as Black to play."

Thanks David, really nice swindle. However, white should have noticed that after the second rook capture, that both Kh6 and Kh4 win. The former is simpler, 3.Kh6 Rh5+ (3....Rg6+ 4.Bxg6), 4.Kg7 Rg5+ Kf6.

Barry must really have loved that.