John Roycroft

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This article is about the chess composer. For the kickboxer, see John Roycroft (kickboxer).

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John Roycroft 1988 on a trip of a chess course in the Elbsandsteingebirge (Saxon Switzerland)

John Roycroft, Gia Nadareishvili, Virgil Nestorescu and Jan Mortensen (from left to right) 1990 at the PCCC-Session in Benidorm (Spain)

Arthur John Roycroft (born 1929) is an English chess endgame study composer and author. For many years he worked at IBM UK, before joining Donald Michie at the machine intelligence unit of Edinburgh University.

In 1959 he was given the title International Judge of Chess Compositions. In 1965 he founded EG, the first long-running journal dedicated to endgame studies. Roycroft served as editor and publisher through 1991. The journal continues to be published, but under Dutch ownership, and Roycroft remains its chief editor. His book Test Tube Chess (Faber, 1972, ISBN 0-8117-1734-8, revised as The Chess Endgame Study, 1981) is considered one of the best English-language examinations of endgame studies. He also served as the endgame study editor for the British Chess Magazine from 1973-1974.

Roycroft's adaptation of the Guy-Blandford code in the 1970s resulted in the Guy-Blandford-Roycroft code, the most common way of indexing endgame studies used today. He also advised Ken Thompson in writing programs for endgame data bases with four and five pieces. Some of these results have been published in three booklets in 1986 long before Thompson spread his results on CD.

[edit] Literature

Test Tube Chess, Faber and Faber Limited, 1972, ISBN 0-571-09573-9
Queen and Pawn on a2 against Queen, Chess Endgame Consultants and Publishers, April 1986, ISBN 1-869874-00-5
Queen and Pawn on a6 against Queen, Chess Endgame Consultants and Publishers, May 1986, ISBN 1-869874-05-6
Queen and Pawn on b7 against Queen, Chess Endgame Consultants and Publishers, June 1986, ISBN 1-869874-10-2