English Chess Forum

I received the very sad news today that David Everington of Shrewsbury chess club has passed away. I will try to post the link to his obituary when it appears on the Shropshire chess website.

David was my captain for a few years up there. A tenacious player who could more than hold his own against 200+ players well into his sixties, but more importantly always the loveliest man in the room. A huge loss to Shropshire chess.

A very lengthy tribute along with games and a picture of David was posted on www.shrewsburychessclub.org yesterday.

See

Chess wizard who was the 'Voice of Telford' dies

Really sad to hear. My oldest chess friend. David was the strongest Shropshire chess player when I first went to Shrewsbury Chess Club aged four or five in 1967. I am sure I was intolerable, and looking back on it some of the other players obviously thought so, but David's kindness and encouragement never faltered, even when in due course I became stronger than him (and in an unobtrusive way he was very competitive). He really loved Shropshire chess - when in 1969 Shropshire won its first county match for over half a century he produced at his own expense a booklet with all the games annotated. I saw my copy when clearing my late parents' house the other day. Later he produced in the same style a history of Shropshire chess with 100 best games, including an intriguing episode where Otto Schalscha, Shropshire's kingfish of the 1940's, had been adjudicated a loss against grandmaster Yanofsky in a tricky opposite-coloured bishop ending. The event was still occasionally spoken of resentfully and the endgame analysed in Shrewsbury Chess Club even in my time there. It also featured Charlie Morris' win against Tony Miles in the West Wales Open of 1980, my father's finest hour giving up a couple of rooks against Andrew Glaze, and innumerable Everington-O'Reilly tussles from the local league of the 1960s. I haven't found my copy of that yet, but I'm sure it's there somewhere.

I'm sorry to think I'll never hear his favourite anecdote again - a county match when he was a schoolboy and his opponent played the pin ...Bg4 in a double-king's pawn game. David played the standard refutation (as he thought) Bxf7+ Kxf7 Ng5+ winning a pawn, only to meet the reply ....Qxg5. He loved these quirks and curiosities - whenever I saw him he would have a new one to show.

If the Shropshire congress resumes after Covid in 2022 I think I shall now be the last survivor of its first edition in 1973, at least in the sense of the last survivor still playing - hopefully others are still alive.

And, as Phil M said, always the loveliest man in the room. RIP.

That's a lovely tribute John.

Just a quick bit of housekeeping, the link to the Shewsbury Chess Club above will not work once more news is posted there, so the permanent link is this one:

http://www.shrewsburychessclub.org/davi ... ngton-rip/

It might have got missed a bit, but on that page there is also a link to a tribute by Carl Portman (with some more nice photos):

http://www.shrewsburychessclub.org/wp-c ... c-2020.pdf