David Brine Pritchard (October 19, 1919 - December 12, 2005) was a
BritishThe British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, one of the Channel Islands, or of one of the British overseas territories, and their descendants. In a historical context, the term refers to the ancient Britons, the indigenous inhabitants of Great Britain south of the...
chessChess is a board game played between two players. The current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from a similar, much older game of Indian origin...
writer and indoor game
consultantA consultant is a professional who provides advice in a particular area of expertise such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, medicine, finance, life management, economics,...
. He "gained pre-eminence as an indoor games and mind sports consultant, a role that he in effect created. A natural games player, it was to him that inventors or publishers would turn to organise a championship of a new game, write about it or generally promote it."
Almost one million copies of his chess books have been sold.
David Brine Pritchard (October 19, 1919 - December 12, 2005) was a
BritishThe British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, one of the Channel Islands, or of one of the British overseas territories, and their descendants. In a historical context, the term refers to the ancient Britons, the indigenous inhabitants of Great Britain south of the...
chessChess is a board game played between two players. The current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from a similar, much older game of Indian origin...
writer and indoor game
consultantA consultant is a professional who provides advice in a particular area of expertise such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, medicine, finance, life management, economics,...
. He "gained pre-eminence as an indoor games and mind sports consultant, a role that he in effect created. A natural games player, it was to him that inventors or publishers would turn to organise a championship of a new game, write about it or generally promote it."
Almost one million copies of his chess books have been sold. However, Pritchard is mostly known as the author of
The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, where he described more than 1400 different chess variants. In his second book on chess variants,
Popular Chess Variants, Pritchard concentrated on 20 most popular chess variants, such as
extinction chessExtinction chess is a variant of western Chess where the objective of the game has changed. Instead of the winning condition of the game being the checkmate of the opponent's king, the object of the game is to capture all of a particular kind of piece the opponent has...
,
kriegspielKriegspiel is a chess variant invented by Henry Michael Temple in 1899 and based upon the original Kriegsspiel developed by Georg von Rassewitz in 1812. In this game each player can see their own pieces, but not those of their opponent...
,
progressive chessProgressive chess is a chess variant in which players, rather than just making one move per turn, play progressively longer series of moves. The game starts with white making one move, then black makes two consecutive moves, white replies with three, black makes four and so on...
and others, but described them in more detail. He was also close to finishing the second edition of
The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants when he died in 2005.
Besides writing books, Pritchard was also an editor of
Games and Puzzles from 1972 to 1981. He was a games director of the
Mind Sports OrganisationThe Mind Sports Organisation is a vehicle for promoting mental-skill games, including Contract Bridge, Chess, Go, Mastermind, and Scrabble. It was founded in conjunction with an event called the Mind Sports Olympiad...
and president of the British Chess Variants Society.
Personal
"Pritchard was the father of Wanda Dakin and was married to former British Ladies Chess Champion, Elaine Saunders."
"Pritchard became a leading chess player when he beat the British Grandmasters
Jonathan PenroseJonathan Penrose, OBE is an English chess player, emeritus Grandmaster, and International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster who won the British Chess Championship ten times between 1958 and 1969. He is the son of Lionel Penrose, a world famous professor of genetics, and brother of Roger Penrose...
and
Tony MilesAnthony John Miles was an English chess Grandmaster.- Early start in chess :...
, but his interests covered all indoor games." "He was a life fellow of the
Royal Geographical SocietyThe Royal Geographical Society is a British learned society founded in 1830 with the name Geographical Society of London for the advancement of geographical sciences, under the patronage of King William IV...
and his love of travel took him many times around the world."
Pritchard "flew with the RAF during and after the Second World War, serving mainly in the Far East, and reached the rank of squadron leader." "During his service he won the chess championship of
SingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island city-state located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, lying north of the equator, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of Indonesia's Riau Islands. At , Singapore is a microstate and the smallest nation in Southeast...
in 1954 and
MalaysiaMalaysia is a country in Southeast Asia that consists of thirteen states and three Federal Territories, with a total landmass of . The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government. The population stands at over 28 million inhabitants...
in 1955." "He was for some time the president of the Battle of Britain Chess Competition, and held its championship on more than one occasion." "He also won the Southern Counties Championship."
Pritchard died in 2005 at age 86 and was "survived by his wife, Elaine, whom he married in 1952, and their daughter. Elaine was a chess prodigy who won the British Women's Championship at the age of 13, having already won the World Girls' Championship in 1937 and coming close to drawing an exhibition game with the world champion,
Alexander AlekhineAlexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...
, when she was 11." He has five grandchildren.
Career
"His books for beginners,
Begin Chess and The Right Way to Play Chess, sold many hundreds of thousands of copies since their publication in the 1950s." "He also wrote on Go (the Japanese territory game) and other games and puzzles." "He edited the
Games & Puzzles magazine for ten years and his most recent publication was
Teach Yourself Mahjong."
"He served as games director of the Mind Sports Olympiad, an annual event bringing together international competitors in dozens of new and classic board games and other mental skills." "He was president of the British Chess Variants Society and wrote
The Encyclopaedia of Chess Variants (1994) - his magnum opus - which became the definitive work in the field."
"His essays on Japanese chess (
shogi, in English, also known as Japanese chess, is a two-player board game in the same family as Western chess, chaturanga, Chinese Xiangqi, and is the most popular of a family of chess variants native to Japan...
) and Chinese chess (
xiangqiXiangqi is a two-player Chinese board game in the same family as Western chess, chaturanga, shogi and janggi. The present-day form of Xiangqi originated in China and is therefore commonly called Chinese chess in English. The first character 象 Xiàng here has the meaning "image" or...
) are regarded as masterpieces and an easy portal to understanding two of the world's oldest and most subtle board games, regarded by many as equal if not superior to the form of chess played in the West."
"In his tribute on the
English Chess FederationThe English Chess Federation is the governing chess organisation in England and is affiliated to FIDE. The ECF was founded in 1904 as the British Chess Federation and, although Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the Channel Islands had their own federations for many years, it was not until 2005 that the...
website,
Stewart ReubenStewart Reuben is a British chess player, organiser and arbiter. He has officiated at and/or organised a number of high-level chess events held in Britain and elsewhere, including the world chess championship, and was chief organiser of British Chess Championship Congresses for a number of years...
, a former president of the federation, described Pritchard as 'an affable man with a dry sense of humour who was in no sense old-fashioned in his views'."
Books
- Go: A guide to the game (1973), ISBN 0-8117-0740-7
- Brain Games: The World's Best Games for Two (1982), ISBN 0-14-005682-3
- Puzzles for Geniuses (1984), ISBN 0-13-744632-2
- First Moves: How to Start a Chess Game (1986), ISBN 0-06-463718-2
- Puzzles and Teasers for the Easy Chair (1988), ISBN 0-7160-0796-7
- Beginning Chess (1992), ISBN 0-451-17438-0
- The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants (1994), ISBN 0-9524142-0-1
- Card Games (1995), ISBN 0-7136-3816-8
- Patience Games with David Parlett (1996), ISBN 0-7136-4208-4
- The Right Way to Play Chess (2000), ISBN 1-58574-046-2
- Popular Chess Variants (2000), ISBN 0-7134-8578-7
- Honeycomb Chess with Douglas Graham Reid (2002), ISBN 095241421X
- The New Mahjong: The International Game (2004), ISBN 0-7160-2164-1
- A Family Book of Games (2007), ISBN 1-902407-52-0
- The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants (2007), ISBN 0-95551-680-3
- Teach Yourself Mahjong (2007), ISBN 0-07-147882-5
External links