Gerald Botteley 17/01/30 - 03/09/21

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Simon Rogers
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Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2020 4:30 pm

Gerald Botteley 17/01/30 - 03/09/21

Post by Simon Rogers » Fri Oct 15, 2021 1:51 pm

I am sorry to report the recent loss of Gerald Botteley and his wife Florence.
His passing was reported on the Leicestershire & Rutland Chess Association website on the 8th October.
Gerald won the British Senior/Veterans Chess Championship in 1994.
He played Gary Kasparov at Oakham in 1997 and came within a stroke of beating him.
Gerald and Gary met a few years later and Gary went up to Gerald and said "if only you had taken my pawn."
Here is the link to the game:
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1359345
Gerald was also an accomplished violin maker/restorer, musician, a published poet and writer.
Gerald, 88, passed away in Peterborough after a long illness and 8 hours later, his wife of 67 years, Florence, 91, passed away at their Oakham home.
RIP

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John Saunders
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Location: Kingston-upon-Thames
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Re: Gerald Botteley 17/01/30 - 03/09/21

Post by John Saunders » Fri Oct 15, 2021 7:16 pm

Sad news. I didn't know Gerald but his name rang a bell. I found a game he won on my database.

Here is the the result of the 1994 British Veterans' Championship: 1 Gerald Botteley (Oakham) 6/7; 2 Malcolm R Peart (Scarborough) 5½; 3= H James Draisey, M Reuser, Roelof Westra 4; 6= James Nicolson, A Pond, A Summers 3½; 9 Joseph Soesan 3; 10 Donald Baldwin 2½; 11 David A S Buckland 2; 12 David Dickson ½. Some decent rivals for the title there, so a very good result.

Here's the Kasparov game...



The capture of a pawn Kasparov was referencing was presumably 16...Nxb2 instead of 16...f6.

Here's the game I found on my database, from way back in 1958. BH Wood published it in the Birmingham Daily Post as an example of Légal's mate...



I had another look through the newspaper archive and found another win for Gerald from the 1965 National Club Championship...



There is another Gerald Botteley game to be found on BritBase, from the collection of Peter Griffiths' games, but having broken the principle of 'de mortuis scacchisticis nihil nisi victoriae' once already, I shall not give the score.
Personal Twitter @johnchess
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