English Chess Forum

Remembering CGM Keith Richardson (02-ii-1942 10-iv-2017)

Keith, in 1975, was England's first correspondence Grandmaster.

He was 1962 British Under-21 Champion and (almost) England's first European Junior Champion.

A jolly nice fellow and co-founder of Camberley Chess Cub with Anne Sunnucks amongst many other things.

Keith played at one of the early English Senior Championships organised by Neil Graham at Dovedale. We had a chat about golf - his handicap was 14, respectable club standard. I've never been better than 19 myself. As Keith was excellent at cricket and squash, I wonder if his handicap might have been lower in his younger days. However, the mention of constraints on his time suggest that he probably wouldn't have joined a golf club before retirement.This led to a rather inconclusive enquiry by me to the Quotes and Queries column in BCM. 'Among British titled chess players who has achieved the lowest official golf handicap?' As far as I remember nothing much came up except that R.P. Ross of Hull played off 2, very impressive. However, although I think he was a trawler magnate, he wasn't a titled player. I therefore put out the question again here. I'd be surprised if Keith gets the accolade.

A prime example of success in chess and a physical sport is Sir George Thomas and badminton, though, going foreign, Agdestein and football is remarkable.

Paul,

I attended Keith's funeral and the reception following was at the rather excellent Camberley Heath Golf Club of which Keith was a popular member. Apart from family members I met (once more) the Farrand family and the Edwards family plus many golfing, cricketing and chess colleagues.

Keith was hugely liked and a stalwart player for Camberley Chess Club which he helped to establish with Anne Sunnucks.

As a correspondence player he inevitably had a large chess library. Many of these books were in German and were made available to be sold on behalf of his Parkinson's charity.

I played Keith OTB in 2014 and when he got short of time, I was optimistic, but he played well and duly won. He was a really nice guy and we had a good chat afterwards. He had given up CC as he didn't want to play computers. I did reassure him that you could still find better moves than the computer but it was difficult.

As for Paul's question, RP Ross (whom I played at Hastings once) - I knew he "was" Ross frozen food, did he catch the fish before freezing it?

As for golf, a school friend Cliff Weight was Handicap 2 at the age of 17(!), and graded 170+, but he wasn't titled of course. I now really want to know who the best chess-playing golfer is.

Magnus Carlsen is pretty good at table-tennis and snowboarding, but that's not quite the same thing...

Paul Habershon wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 11, 2021 5:06 pm

Keith played at one of the early English Senior Championships organised by Neil Graham at Dovedale. We had a chat about golf - his handicap was 14, respectable club standard. I've never been better than 19 myself. As Keith was excellent at cricket and squash, I wonder if his handicap might have been lower in his younger days.

I'm pretty sure he told me his best handicap was 5 or 6 (the uncertainty being my memory of what Keith told me, not his).

Ian Thompson wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 12, 2021 12:10 am

I'm pretty sure he told me his best handicap was 5 or 6 (the uncertainty being my memory of what Keith told me, not his).

Thanks, Ian. A 5 or 6 handicap for Keith sounds very plausible, especially as the 14 mentioned in my conversation with him was well after the 1990s Parkinson's diagnosis (which I didn't know about). I'd be surprised if any of our OTB GMs and IMs can beat that. Even if they had the inclination, the time-consuming nature of chess at that level, and the financial circumstances of some of them, mean that it's unlikely they would join a golf club, let alone achieve a single-figure handicap. Perhaps some sporty guys in the traditional ECF Congress cricket matches had potential. I can imagine Andrew Martin giving a golf ball a good hammering.

Reading the appreciation, I got sidetracked after seeing the crosstable for the 1963 Niemeyer tournament and seeing that for whatever reason one of the competitors didn't have a flag against their name (though he has one here).

I'd not heard of Ernst Roscam Abbing (or any of the competitors except the first two) but hunting around I came across this page which appears to be a list of champions of the Benoordenhout chess club and which also appears to show that in 2018 Ernst Roscam Abbing won the club championship for the first time.

Now I have no Dutch so I may have misinterpreted the page, but if I'm correct - is there not something very unusual about a player winning their club championship, in their mid-seventies, for the very first time?

Sounds unusual, yes. The usual explanations for such a phenomenon would be that he had just recently joined the club, or some other strong player had recently left it.

IM Jack Rudd wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 12, 2021 3:17 pm

Sounds unusual, yes. The usual explanations for such a phenomenon would be that he had just recently joined the club, or some other strong player had recently left it.

Or that the club itself had been founded only a short time before.

Re sporting prowess, I vaguely remember reading somewhere once that Ljubojevic had been a very promising footballer, but switched to chess instead after a serious leg injury. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find anything on-line to confirm it.

There was the Romanian turned German IM Bela Soos, who played football for his native country at international level.

Before Camberley, Keith played a high board for Athenaeum Chess Club when we won the London league a couple of times and the National Club Championship ca. 1974-75-76.

Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 13, 2021 1:43 pm

There was the Romanian turned German IM Bela Soos, who played football for his native country at international level.

I now believe this is fake news - like quite a lot else in The Complete Chess Addict. It was questioned some years ago so I spent some time looking up Romanian international football teams from the period without finding any reference to him.

According to Wikipedia: "As a youth, he was a keen football player, representing Dinamo Bucharest during his military service."

Thanks for that, though it suggests he still played soccer at a reasonably high level.

(pretty sure I saw the "international" claim made before Addict was published, maybe in a chess - possibly Chess - magazine?)

Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 13, 2021 6:17 pm

Thanks for that, though it suggests he still played soccer at a reasonably high level.

(pretty sure I saw the "international" claim made before Addict was published, maybe in a chess - possibly Chess - magazine?)

Yes - which is where we would have taken it from.