|
16/09/2025
Christopher
C W Shephard
25/02/1951
– 14/09/2025
Sheffield Nomads
chess club has been informed that Chris Shephard died on Sunday the 14th of
September. The cause was reportedly some form of abdominal cancer which
had been deemed untreatable. He had been at the forefront of Sheffield
chess from 1977 to the present, his last competitive game having been as
recently as 07/07/2025 in the Summer League.
Christopher C W
Shephard was born in Birmingham on 25th of February 1951. What the “C W”
in the middle stood for is unclear. (Geoff Frost says, “I am almost
certain that C W stood for Charles Walter. Chris hated being known as
CCW!”.) He has a brother, Andrew N R Shephard, who Chris mentioned to
me once as being “Andrew” within the family, but “Andy” outside. (The
writer was never “Steve” until the chess world imposed that name on him.)
Chris attended King
Edwards, Birmingham, where he was the first person to select a certain A J
Miles to play in a chess team, for an inter-house match. This was, of
course, Tony Miles, born 23 April 1955, destined to attend Sheffield
University and to become the first England player to qualify as a
Grandmaster. (After Chris had left the school, King Edward VII school,
Sheffield, played King Edward’s (VI), Birmingham in the Sunday Times
competition, and I with White played on board 1 against the said A. J.
Miles. The opening was 1. d4 f5 2. g4. Miles was clearly
unprepared and chewed his fingernails continually, but he eventually won!)
He’s recorded as
joining KES Birmingham old Boys Association in 1969. There seemed no
evidence of him going to university, but Jon Nelson unearthed references to
him playing for Sussex University. Chris’s attendance at Sussex
University is confirmed by reference to grading lists showing him in 1971 and
1972 as of both South Birmingham and Sussex University chess clubs.
Enigmatically, he is listed in neither the 1970 BCF Grading List nor
the 1970 SCCU Grading List, rather suggesting he dutifully buckled down and
concentrated on his studies and abstained from any significant amount of
chess?!
+-+-+-+-+-+-+
What follows starts
with a random selection of snippets which illustrate Chris’s early prominence
in Birmingham and Warwickshire chess, and then my personal remembrances of
Chris in his earlier years in Sheffield while he was connected with Rotherham
Chess Club in its heyday along with extracted details events he played
in. Others may wish to submit their own contributions.
In particular, Martin
Howard has submitted a well-written person piece which appears separately
below. (Click here to jump down to it.)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Chess before
Sheffield
In 1967 Chris played
on board 10 for Birmingham league v Leamington league, beating J T Wood.
In April 1968 he won
the West Midlands and Warwickshire U-18 Boys’ Championship.
He played in the
British U-18 Championship of 1968, finishing 37th-44th= out of 54, on 4½ out
of 11.
The 1969 Warwickshire
Championship was a 5-player all-play-all won Peter Griffiths (Solihull) on 3
points out of 4, followed by 2nd-3rd= R. V. M Hall (Birmingham, later
Bradford, becoming a high court judge) and C. C. W. Shephard (South
Birmingham) on 2½. There followed, J R Crampton (Birmingham) on 1½, and
W Ritson Morry (Mutual) who as defending champion managed to score only ½.
In 1969, KES
Birmingham reached the two-day semi-finals and finals of the Sunday Times
held in London. In the final, Birmingham met Dundee High School and at
the close of play the score was 3-2 in Birmingham’s favour. Normally,
adjudications are done there and then to give a final result on the day, but,
as Jon Nelson dug up to his amusement, adjudicator C H O’D Alexander,
declined to adjudicate since as a former pupil of KES Birmingham he would be
biased. So, the adjudication was afterwards sent to Harry Golombek, who
awarded Tony Miles a loss, making the score 3-3 when Dundee won on
tie-break. What Jon doesn’t know is that I (Steve Mann) was actually
there. KES Sheffield lost in the semi-final to Dundee. I drew my
game on board one with black against Dundee’s Chris Jones (now of chess
problem fame). Later, as Steve Lorber and I were on our way to the
evening meal, our lift got stuck, resulting in at irate American threatening
to sue, and an elderly German lady believing she would die of asphyxiation despite
being consoled by her daughter. Later that evening, some KES Sheffield
and Dundee players played bridge into the early hours. The next day,
Chris Shephard lost to Chris Jones in the final; so, that’s one up to
me. At some stage, presumably the morning of the first day, all four
teams were treated to a cinema showing of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, though
there was a feeling we were all a bit old for such a film. By a strange
quirk of fate, one of the Dundee team, Andrew Baruch, was years later captain
of a Warwickshire team playing against Yorkshire at the Abbey were B&J
played (now Ecclesall’s venue); he now plays for Kenilworth,.
The British
Universities Chess Association (BUCA) championships were held 6th to 11th
April 1970 at Manchester University, the latter entering three teams in the
team event. The preliminary stage put Sussex from Preliminary section D
into Final section 2 where they came second, making them 10th-11th= overall
(with Warwick as it happens). In the Final phase, Chris won with black
against J Sanz of Southampton in a Sokolsky, but the game is absent from the
official bulletin. One of Chris’s games has been exhumed, against a
player from Manchester III in the preliminary phase. Click on the
following link to play through the game on screen:
S H
Foster 0-1 Chris Shepherd In 1971 Chris played
in the Paignton Congress.
On 12/05/1973, he was
board 7 for Warwickshire against Lancashire in the English Counties ¼-finals
(presumably 1972-73 season). Chris beat a T Ludgate. Warks.
captain W Ritson Morry reckoned this was probably the strongest Warwickshire
team he’d ever fielded, but Warks. lost 5½-14½ to a much stronger Lancashire
line-up.
Shortly after, on
19/05/1973, Warwickshire met Leicestershire in the final of the Midland
Counties Championship. The final score was 8-8, and Warks. won on board
count. Chris was on board 4 and drew with Kevin Wicker.
In 1973, Chris played
in the Midland Open Championship, part of the Birmingham International
Congress, finishing 2nd on 8½ out of 11, behind the winner, Louis de Veauce
who scored 9 points. Chris’s game with Michael J Pitt is mentioned
later.
The relative timings of
ECF final and MCCU final suggests the ECF competition was in those days based
of the previous season’s Union results, or the two were then wholly separate.
On about 23rd of
March 1974, Chris was playing on board 2 for Warwickshire against
Leicestershire in the Midland Counties semi-final, drawing with L A Edwards.
On 09/04/1974 played
board 1 for Birmingham in the annual Birmingham v Coventry League match –
losing to R. S. McFarland.
On about 14/09/1974,
Chris played board 5 for Warwickshire against Nottinghamshire beating T. Guy.
On 03/07/1975, Chris
play on board 4 for Warwickshire against a much stronger Lancashire team in
the English Counties Championship, losing to Martyn Corden,
At the Birmingham
Easter Congress of 10th-25th April 1976, in the Midland Open Championship,
Chris finished 3rd-4th= out of with Chris W Baker on 7½ out of 11, behind
Glenn Lambert 1st on 10 and Stephen Berry 2nd on 9½.
October 1976 saw the
first Warwickshire Open Championship. Chris entered and shared 1st and
2nd places with Nigel Povah (formerly of Leeds University).
Over-the-Board Chess
while in Sheffield
By the time of the
1977 British Chess Championship held in Brighton from 8th to 19th August,
Chris was resident in Sheffield, meaning the move to Sheffield was at some
time from October 1976 to August 1977.
In the 1977 British
Championship, Chris finished 25th-30th= out of 40, with 5 points out of
11. A notable result was a draw with 8th-11th-placed Jonathan
Penrose. His best win was perhaps that against Glenn Flear (then East
Midlands Under 18 Champion), which featured Chris’s favoured Czech Benoni
set-up, with Black’s king’s bishop being deployed either via e7 or being
fianchettoed. Click on the following link to play through the game on
screen.
Glenn Flear 0-1 Chris Shephard
Chris had taken up a
computer programming post at Midland Bank in Sheffield, and the bank played
in the Sheffield Works Chess League.
After a game on board
1 in a Sheffield Works League match between Midland Bank and the Civil
Service team (whose name varied a bit), Chris, having once again drawn with
the writer, this time with the Czech Benoni, said I seemed to save my best
chess to play against him! In reality, you knew Chris’s next move
before he did, he was so predictable.
That somewhat stodgy,
safe style was not always his style. Going back to the 1973, Midland
Open Championship, with White against the then-or-soon-to-be Warwickshire
Under 18 Champion Michael Pitt, Chris opened with the Grob Attack, 1. g4, in
a manner reminiscent of the writer’s treatment of Tony Miles mentioned
above. Click on the following link to play through the game on screen.
Chris
Shephard 1-0 Michal Pitt
Once in Sheffield,
Chris joined Rotherham Chess Club which in those days was a major contender
for Sheffield League Division 1 (Davy Trophy), and Yorkshire League Division
1 (Woodhouse Cup).
Prior to 1977, Colin
Evans had won the Sheffield Championship more times that anyone else, having
notched up 8 wins (but not in the year the writer as a schoolboy knocked him
out!). The most any other person had won it was 4 times, 4-time winners
being Charlie Gurhill, Norman Littlewood and Brian Jones,
In 1977, Chris won
the Sheffield Championship, and up to 2019 inclusive Chris had won it 29½
times, the “½” being in 1994 when he shared it with Alan Potts. The
second-best total during that period was 3, scored by Paul Blackman.
Rotherham used to enter
the British Team Lightning Championship, winning it in 1975, though that was
before Chris arrived in Sheffield. I remember in a later year
travelling with Chris in his car down to the British Team Lightning at
Woolwich Arsenal, with me navigating. Bizarrely, I didn’t bring any
maps but merely aimed for the Thames between the Blackwall Tunnel and the
bridge further to the west, aiming to use whichever presented itself to cross
the river, then navigate from memory of the general layout. At one
stage, while going southwards through London, I told Chris he needed to be
more over to the right. Why? – because the apparel of the gentlemen in
the street made it clear we were going through Golders Green, too far to the
east. We got there easily enough.
On one occasion,
returning from a match, four Rotherham players including Paul Blackman and
myself, stopped at a pub and decided to have a doubles game of pool.
Paul was the strongest pool player of the four while I had never played
before! So, I was paired with Paul. The other two as far as I
remember were Chris and Geoff Frost. Nobody else would be daft
enough. Anyway, it got to the point where there was one ball left to be
potted, and it was my turn. The snag was that the ball to be potted was
near a middle pocket but the cue ball was in the opposite half of the
table. For a professional, it was an easy case of sending the cue ball
down to the far cushion so that is bounced back and kicked the other ball so
that it went into the pocket. Being academically a physicist, I could
work out the angle to make the cue ball hit the other ball in the right place
to pot it, and, a little surprisingly, putting theory into practiced actually
worked. The ball went down the pocket, and Paul and I had won.
That was the only time I actually beat Chris at anything!
Chris served as an
adjudicator in the days of adjudication of unfinished games, and I used to be
able to walk from my own home in the Nether Edge area, up the Brincliffe Edge
and down the other side to get to Chris’s bachelor pad on Bannerdale Road to
deliver adjudications. That house had a garage with an up-and-over
garage door, and on one occasion he dislocated a shoulder opening that door,
just before he was about to go on a skiing holiday, which of course got
cancelled.
When Brian Jones
drove me to Woodhouse Cup matches and the like, he’d give a time for me to be
at Sheffield Midland Station knowing I’d be on time. If Chris was
travelling with us, Brian would give Chris a time 10 minutes earlier, as he
knew Chris was invariably late!
In time, Rotherham
lost its former strength as a foremost club in the Sheffield area.
Brian Jones moved back to Manchester around 1982 (then emigrated to
Australia). I helped form Darnall & Handsworth around 1984.
The Works League eventually folded, and so on. Chris ended up joining
Sheffield Nomads. So, in the last 20-ish years Chris and chess paths
have not crossed.
He played in the
Doncaster Congress of 2006, the Sheffield Congress of 2012 (4th-6th=), and
the Scarborough Congress of 2012.
Once he became old
enough, Chris competed, initially regularly, in the British Over 65
Championship, doing so in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2024. He tended to hold
those who finished above him to a draw, but was inadequately ruthless in
maximising the point extracted from those finishing below him, so, despite
sometimes starting as the highest rated player, he never won the event.
The relevant fact here is perhaps that Chris was not a regular
congress-player. A summary of his British Under-65 exploits is as follows:
|
Year
|
Placed
|
Out of
|
Pts
|
1st
(=)
|
|
|
won
|
drawn
|
lost
|
|
2017
|
3 to
|
7 =
|
53
|
5/7
|
Stephen H Berry,
|
Roger Emerson
|
|
3
|
4
|
0
|
|
2018
|
4 to
|
8 =
|
54
|
5/7
|
Geoffrey H James,
|
Oliver A Jackson,
|
Kevin Bowmer
|
3
|
4
|
0
|
|
2019
|
5 to
|
13 =
|
50
|
4½/7
|
David Friedgood,
|
Mark E Page,
|
Brian WR Hewson
|
4
|
1
|
2
|
|
2024
|
8 to
|
13 =
|
58
|
4½/7
|
Andrew P Smith
|
|
|
3
|
3*
|
1
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* inc 1 HPB
|
In 2017, Chris drew
with Roger Emerson in round 5, and in the final round drew with Stephen
Berry, thereby denying the latter a won game to secure clear first place.
In 2018, Chris drew
with two of three joint winners in games of little interest in themselves,
but also drew with two lower-placed players, so denying himself first place.
In 2019, Chris seems
to have decided to fight rather acquiesce to draws. Thus, he lost to
the only one of the 1st-placed players (Page, a lower-rated player), but on
the other hand scored 4 wins whereas hitherto he’d managed only 3. He
lost to local player Jim Burnett.
Covid precluded the
OTB British Championship 2020, and Caplin British Online Chess Championships
2020/2021 plugged the gap. Chris didn’t feature in the rather weak
16-player Over-65 event, but dived into the local online events run by
Rotherham’s Oliver Brennan.
Chris didn’t enter
the 2021, 2022 or 2023 British Over 65s, but sallied forth again in 2014.
In 2024, Chris took a
half-point bye in round 1. In round 2 he continued the “make it up as
you go along” approach to openings seen back in 2017, beating a much weaker
player. The same unorthodox approach netted him only a draw against
another weaker opponent in round 3. For round four, Chris played a
“proper” opening as White – and thereby managed to lose to a weaker opponent!
In round 4, he beat a significantly weaker player in an initially
symmetrical English in which Chris would feel very much at home. (After
1. c4 e5, an early f5 by Black worked for me against Chris.) In round
5, he redeemed himself with a win against 2019 joint winner Brian
Hewson. Round 6 saw a 24-move draw with joint 2018 winner Geoffrey
James. Chris lost abysmally his round-7 game against a player rated a
mere 9 points more (nothing).
All games from the
above events are freely available in PGN format. Here follow a few
which take my fancy, to be played here on screen by clicking on the link:
Then there’s the
English (as opposed to British) Over 65 Championship . . . . This
was first held in 2019, held in April rather than July/August. Chris
participated in the 2019, 2022 and 2023 editions, summarised as follows:
|
Year
|
Placed
|
of
|
Pts
|
1st
(=)
|
|
|
won
|
drawn
|
lost
|
|
2019
|
2nd
|
40
|
5/6
|
Kevin Bowmer
|
|
|
4
|
2
|
0
|
|
2022
|
4 to
|
5 =
|
32
|
5/7
|
Cliff Chandler,
|
Ian Snape,
|
Paul Littlewood
|
4
|
2
|
1
|
|
2023
|
11 to
|
15 =
|
50
|
4/7
|
C W Baker
|
|
|
2
|
4
|
1
|
Here are two games
from 2019. In the first, Chris holds the ultimate winner to a
draw. In the second, Chris meet a fellow silly-opening exponent.
Chris played for
Yorkshire in 7 county matches (but only in the ECF Final stage) over the
period 09/06/2018 to 08/06/2024.
|
09/06/2018
|
W
|
Dimitar
Mogilarov
|
Middx
|
0-1
|
Chris CW Shephard
|
Yorks
|
B
|
|
30/06/2018
|
W
|
Martin
Mitchell
|
Lancs
|
1-0
|
Chris
CW Shephard
|
Yorks
|
B
|
|
08/06/2019
|
W
|
Nevil Chan
|
Middx
|
½-½
|
Chris
CW Shephard
|
Yorks
|
B
|
|
30/06/2019
|
B
|
Chris
CW Shephard
|
Yorks
|
1-0
|
Clive A
Frostick
|
Surrey
|
W
|
|
14/05/2022
|
W
|
Steven
F Coles
|
Middx
|
½-½
|
Chris
CW Shephard
|
Yorks
|
B
|
|
11/06/2022
|
W
|
Chris
CW Shephard
|
Yorks
|
1-0
|
Tim
Hilton
|
GrM/c
|
B
|
|
08/06/2024
|
W
|
Pete G
Large
|
Surrey
|
½-½
|
Chris
CW Shephard
|
Yorks
|
B
|
Prior to that his
previous 2 appearances in county matches were much earlier and were
representing Warwickshire, as follows:
|
09/05/2004
|
W
|
Mike A
Walker
|
Yorks
|
1-0
|
Chris
CW Shephard
|
Warks
|
B
|
|
13/10/2007
|
W
|
Alan J
Walton
|
GrM/c
|
1-0
|
Chris CW Shephard
|
Warks
|
B
|
Despite living in
Sheffield, Chris maintained connections with his friends in Birmingham.
Not that long after him coming to Sheffield, Chris arranged for a
Rotherham team to go down to Birmingham to play a friendly match against his
old club, South Birmingham. He continued to play, albeit occasionally,
for Warwickshire in county matches (as above). As late as 1997, he
played for Warwickshire in the now‑discontinued Counties Rapidplay
Championships. He played in the 4NCL for Warwickshire Select as recently
as 2023-24 season. In the following game from the season 2014-25,
Chris’s higher rated opponent sacrifices the exchange for a pawn and gets
reasonable compensation, but Black perhaps over‑presses and Chris
manages to turn the tables, and once Black realises his position is hopeless,
seems intentionally to set up a sort of self-make rather than simply resign.
Click on the following link to play through the game on screen.
Chris
Shephard 1-0 Clement Sreeves.
Correspondence Chess
while in Sheffield
A less visible yet
major side of Chris’s devotion to chess was his engagement with
correspondence chess. In the old days, it was of course carried out by
“snail mail” but is now played online. Things also changed over with
the advent of chess-analysing computer software with meant players with
modest over-the-board ability could be strong correspondence players.
Chris started young,
winning the 1972 British Junior Correspondence Chess Championship. He
went on to win the British Correspondence Chess Championship proper in 1978
and then again in 1979 jointly with S D Cunliffe and A M Stewart. He
became an International Correspondence Chess Master in 1984,
He was board six of
the 6-board Great Britain team in the 9th ICCF Olympiad which ran from 1977
to 1982, with the second-best board 6 total of 5½ out of 8. (GB boards:
1 Jonathan Penrose, 2 Adrian Swayne Hollis, 3 Simon Webb, 4 John Kenneth Footner
[the only one unfamiliar to me], 5 John Toothill, 6 Chris C W Shephard.)
The North Atlantic
Team Tournament is a correspondence tournament between 8-board teams from
countries on the western fringe of Europe and in North & Central America
& the Caribbean. The 1st was played in 1984-85 and Chris was
selected to play for Great Britain on board 8. Great Britain won the
event. The players selected in later events seemed to be to give
different people a go, and Chris seems not to have played in this event
again. Click on the following link to play through Chris’s game on
screen:
F Perez Conde 0-1 Chris Shephard
He was board six of
the 6-board Great Britain team in the 9th ICCF Olympiad which ran from 1982
to 1987, with the second/third-best board 6 total of 6½ out of 8. (GB
boards as in 1982.) Here are two of Chris’s games. Annotators to
Chris’s game against Brglez were unsure as to whether Brglez made a clerical
error with 4. e4 or was trying it out as a gambit! Russian
correspondence GM Omelschenko comes up with something of an opening
innovation in the Najdorf Sicilian. Chris seems to be getting the worst
of it but defends well and manages to draw. Great Britain came 1st,
West Germany 2nd, and USSR (who’d been 1st in the previous three events)
3rd. Click on the following links to play through two of Chris’s games
on screen:
F Brglez 0-1 Chris Shephard
L E Omeltschenko ½-½ C
Shephard
As an individual, he
played in the Julius
Nielson Memorial which ran from 26/09/1985 to about 09/10/1990, finishing
5th-8th = (7th on Sonneborn-Berger tie-break) on 7 out of 14, Jonathan
Penrose being 1st. Nielsen was a Danish correspondence player who died
in 1981. His game against R(o)umanian Mihai Breazu has been published,
though it’s nothing special. Click on the following link to play
through Breazu v Shephard on screen:
Mihai Breazu 0-1 Chris Shephard
The ICCF server
reveals he played for Warwickshire in the Counties & District
Correspondence Chess Championship Division 1 aka the Ward-Higgs in the
seasons 2005-06 to 2018-19, seemingly except 2008-09. Warwickshire
dropped out of the event after 2018-19.
Once when I took a
position for adjudication round to Chris at 187 Bannerdale Road, he had the
latest position in one of his postal games set up, and asked me for ideas as
to what he should do. That might sound daft as I was of course weaker
than he, but as with cryptic crosswords, the brain can get stuck in ruts when
analysing, so I may have kindled some worthwhile idea he’d not thought of
(yet). The humour of him asking for my comments became apparent when he
mentioned he was in that game playing a Russian Correspondence Grandmaster,
who of course I routinely ate for breakfast (or not).
There are, of course,
more important things than chess.
Family
There was a lady
Sheffield chess-player who originally married a Sheffield University
chess-player, the two staying on in Sheffield after university. Sadly,
she decided to leave the marriage, and set her aim on Chris! That
didn’t get her anywhere. She’s long gone down south and aimed her
sights even higher in terms of chess-playing strength, remarrying. No
names appropriate here.
It was customary,
after a Saturday Woodhouse Cup match, for a significant proportion of the
Rotherham team to go and have a meal in an Indian restaurant, and on one such
occasion Chris produced and introduced a lady friend called Mavis.
Obviously, matrimony or something similar was possibly on the cards, and I
remember taking the liberty of telling Chris later that Mavis seemed an ideal
partner for him, and so it turned out!
For one reason or another,
Chris Shepherd and Mavis King did not get married, but three children mean
more than matrimonial bureaucracy in my book. So it was that
Amy Elizabeth King
was born in January 1986 (or maybe slightly before),
Clara Jane King was
born in the latter part of 1988, and
James William King
was born in the earlier part of 1992,
all taking Mavis’s
surname.
Apparently, Chris and
Mavis did in fact get married recently, maybe as recently as 2024.
Once, I and my own
“other half” (and no, we aren’t married either) with members of the extended
family, spent a day visiting Hardwick Hall. While we were in a café
there, quite by chance, Chris and Mavis entered. They had a daughter
with them back in the car so didn’t stay long.
Whilst words cannot
do much, I’m sure all in the Sheffield & District Chess Association, and
beyond, who new Chris would wish to express their sorrow and sympathy for
Chris’s family.
Steve Mann
+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Martin Howard’s appreciation of
Chris.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+
The number of
comments about Chris speaks volumes about how highly he was regarded by all
who knew him. I was privileged to know him for many years. I played him a
number of times over the board. He usually outplayed me although I did manage
a couple of draws. My one win was as a result of adjudication. Chris thought
the adjudicators should have decided it was drawn and he was probably right !
David Adams knew
Chris even longer than I did. They had played in school matches in the
Birmingham area. I think Jon is correct when he is doubtful that Chris went
to Warwick. I do have a recollection that it may have been Sussex. Also Geoff
is right that Chris and Mavis married quite recently.
Chris was incredibly
modest. He was a phenomenally strong correspondence player, as you can see
from the information on English Chess Forum : twice British Correspondence
Chess Champion (1977 and 1978). He was also strong over the board. I doubt
anyone will ever beat his score of 29 wins in the Sheffield Individual
Championship.
I know Chris was very
proud of having been a founder member of Sheffield Nomads. He will be a huge
loss to the club.
For my part I was
fortunate to play golf with Chris for several years. David Adams and I used
to play golf with Chris usually at Birley Golf Course in Sheffield but
occasionally at Beauchief or Dore & Totley. I was amused to see the
comments about Chris’ s timekeeping. Others have mentioned that he was
usually late for chess matches. It was no different with golf. Sometimes he
did not arrive until after our tee off time. Nevertheless we all had a great
time. After golf we would retire to the pub next door where we would often
play through our recent chess games. I will very much miss those times.
A gentle soul indeed
and a huge loss to us all.
Martin
|