Alan Beresford

[John Reyes]

Chorlton Chess Club are sad to inform us of the death of their member Alan Beresford.

Alan played regularly in the Stockport League and captained Chorlton's team from 2001 to 2016.

He was also a stalwart of the MCF county teams.

[Mick Norris]

That's sad news

Alan played regularly for Greater Manchester in county matches, and also played for the Manticores briefly in the 4NCL

Alan won his game in the u160 final victory against Yorkshire

I am told the funeral will be at Altrincham Crematorium after Easter

[MartinCarpenter]

Oh, that's very sad. He always seemed a nice, happy person.

[Peter Ackley]

Sad to hear this and my condolences to friends and family. I only met Alan in person once when playing for Middlesex however I played Alan numerous times at correspondence chess in the now-folded Warwickshire Championship (usually, towards the end, myself, John Carleton, Colin Woodford, David Gallico and Alan). He was always happy to exchange a note with a move. I think it hit him when correspondence chess moved online, although I do remember someone (I want to say Keith Escott but I could be wrong) offered to do the online move entry for him if Alan phoned him with his moves.

My lasting memory (often joked about with John Carleton) was Alan would always re-use your envelope and send it back with blank sticky labels covering the old information. One time I decided to see if I could get Alan to actually use a new envelope and send him something stuck together with the strongest tape I could find; something which made Fort Knox look like tissue paper. A week later back comes the envelope. No comment; nothing. Although the games were drawn Alan clearly won the envelope wars!

[Jon Mahony]

RIP - I've played Alan at CC multiple times - does anyone have a picture? Not sure I ever did know what he looked like, but would be interested.

[Mick Norris]

2012.07.07 U160 ECF Final winning team 1.jpeg

[Mick Norris]

Back row - David Pardoe, Adam Tyton, Glenn Trueman, David Kierman, Phil Boyd, David Holt, Tim Hilton, (Dave Newell left before the photo)

Front row - Graham Phythian, Alan Beresford, Jake Manton, Daniel Abbas, Jonathan Lonsdale with trophy, Andy Horton, me, Kamran Ahmadi

7 July 2012, ECF u160 county champions

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Good to put some faces to names, thanks Mick!

[Jon Mahony]

Nice one Mick.

Do you think they are keeping David Pardoe and Adam Tyton there?

Ah, and the days when Tim Hilton hadn't discovered "Sherbets"

[Mick Norris]

Thanks Jon, it's always nice to have an excuse to mention that we beat Yorkshire! 8-8 and the board count was 20-22, so very close; although the focus now might be on future IM Andy Horton, and the fact that the only one of our top half dozen still u160 is me, the reality is that the team relied on people like Alan, who would always play if he could, and is sadly missed, as is Dave P

7 of the team have been county captains too; it seems our strongest players aren't interested in county chess (or at least, enough to captain the team), and lack of captains remains the issue everywhere, but we do have lots of players who want to play

[AustinElliott]

although the focus now might be on future IM Andy Horton...

Daniel Abbas, who was a year younger than Andy Horton, deserves a mention too - one of the all-conquering Manchester Grammar School team alongside Daniel Fernandez and the Horton brothers, as well as part of many Manchester League-topping 3Cs teams. Daniel Abbas got the FM title aged 16-17, same sort of age as Andy Horton did, and played for Oxford in several Varsity matches. Don't know if he is still playing these days. Last I heard he was in Germany doing a PhD in molecular biology.

[AustinElliott]

As others have said 'Alan would always play', even on very short notice - so very much the sort of club stalwart team captains depend on. A fixture through my first decade at Chorlton (2010-20).

Sadly, Alan never returned to the club when we re-opened after the Covid lockdowns. Even before the pandemic, complications from his diabetes had made him pretty immobile, and after more health setbacks he was unable to go out much. He did keep in touch with several club members who were old chess pals, or who lived near him.

When I first arrived at Chorlton Alan used to captain the Stockport league (1st division) team. With those games, plus playing in the Manchester League 1st, 2nd and even 3rd teams whenever required, plus the local Summer league, I reckon Alan must have played easily three dozen or so club games a season for Chorlton through much of that decade, plus the county ones people have mentioned. And that's before you get to correspondence chess. I do remember Alan's house, the only time I saw it, being full of chess boards with his various then-current correspondence games set up.

Hunting through Eric Nowell and Alan Smith's 1990 'Chess in Manchester' History, Alan's name first turns up as a winner or high finisher in the MCF Summer Congress Intermediate Sections in 1980 and 1982. Back in the 80s Alan was a member of the Sale Chess Club, which I believe was a significant outfit in the MCF in those days - e.g. they did the Manchester A Division and Reyner Trophy 'League & Cup' double in 1983-4. Older Chorlton members tell me Alan came to our club when the Sale club folded.

We have managed to find a 1980s OTB game of Alan's from the Sale years in one of the late Vic Knox's Manchester Evening News chess columns from the 1980s. These are findable (with some digging) on microfiche in the Manchester Central Library, and Chorlton's Chris Vassiliou collected a lot of the microfiche records a decade ago. Not all are exactly legible! Chris dug out the relevant column when we heard Alan had died, and we spent some time this week 'reconstructing' the game score. We didn't have time to decipher Vic's annotations, so the ones here are those I added for the club website.

[Event "Manchester League"] [Date "1984"] [White "Beresford, Alan (Sale)"] [Black "Lawrence, P (M'cr Univ)"] [Result "1-0"] 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 e6 7. f4 Be7 {The old main line of Najdorf theory featured in tons of 1950s, 60s and 70s master games, mostly with 7. ..Be7 or with Bobby Fischer's favourite 'Poisoned Pawn' line 7. ...Qb6. The Bg5/f4 system was a very characteristic opening choice for Alan, who always stuck to main lines and open Sicilians, particularly with Bg5 as White. Slightly unusual for a club player, as most now tend to try and dodge too much Sicilian theory.} 8. Qf3 h6 9. Qh3 e5 10. Nf5 g6 11. fxe5 dxe5 12. Rd1 Qa5 13. Bxf6 Bxf5 {If 13. ..Bxf6 14. Nd6+} 14. exf5 Bxf6 15. fxg6 Ke7 {Not a move you'd want to play, but 15. ..fxg6 16. Qe6+ and Qxg6+ is terminal.} 16. gxf7 Kxf7 17. Bc4+ Kg7 18. Qg4+ Bg5 {18. ...Kf8 19. Qe6} 19. h4 Qc5 20. hxg5 Qe3+ 21. Ne2 h5 22. Qf3? {Vic's question mark. Being a piece ahead Alan is presumably getting the Queens off to avoid checks. 22. Qe6 Qxg5 23. Qf7+ Kh6 24. Rd6+ and mate would be more spectator-friendly.} Qxf3 23. gxf3 Kg6 24. Rg1 Nc6 25. Rd6+ Kg7 {Black avoids ...Kf5 26 Rf6#, which would make a nice picture.} 26. Rd7+ Kg6 {Black decides to accept a quick coup-de-grace.} 27. Bd3+ e4 28. Bxe4#

[Reg Clucas]

Alan's funeral will be at Altrincham Crematorium on Friday April 12th at 1:30pm

[Mick Norris]

Dave Kierman of Chorlton has circulated the following:

Arrangements for Alan Beresford’s funeral
Passing on the sad news to our members and to the chess community of Manchester and Stockport leagues.

I know a lot of our newer players at the club would not have known Alan, as he never came back to play for the club after lockdown.
I must start though by writing about the huge contribution Alan’s did for Chorlton Chess club since joining us in 1998.
I believe he started playing chess at Sale, so he came to Chorlton quite late in his chess career, after his original club folded.

Alan played 750 times for the club between 1998-2020
Which is also the most any Chorlton player has played for the club between 1989-2024.
Yes 4 years after he has last played, he is still the player who has represented us the most times in the last 35 years.

He was a prolific club match player and average 35 matches a season.
Notwithstanding the numerous County and League matches he also played in that period.

For Chorlton he was never rated in our top 6-7 players in the club, so this meant he could play in many teams.
Eg
• First team: 152 times (Sixth Highest)
• Second Team: 246 times (Second highest)
• Third Team: 151 times (Third most)
• Fourth team: 30 times

• Stockport league team: 177 times (The most)

He was a good organiser too, for he:
Captained the Chorlton A team in the Stockport league team for about 15 years.
Plus either the Chorlton second or third teams in the Summer league for a similar period.

One thing he didn’t excel at was Quick Chess, for he never won a club tournament, and would mainly boycott our club tournament nights;
however he was our best club player in the Longer format of the Summer league, in the 2002 season.

As John Horner writes:
Alan Beresford died recently. He had been deteriorating over the last few months and was In and out of a care home and hospital. His nearest relative is his brother who is not of good health and his affairs are being managed by Bernie, a long term friend, who lives opposite Alan’s house.
The funeral is a cremation at Atrincham Crematorium on Friday April 12th at 1:30pm
No charity or other donations but flowers on behalf of the club will be taken to the crematorium to be put on the coffin. Please pass on any flower donations to me. There is no wake after the funeral but to set aside an evening to look at some of Alan’s games may be a worthwhile tribute.
I shall be saying a few words about Alan at the funeral to make his family appreciate what Alan has achieved.
John