A RETIRED academic has beaten dozens of other competitors to win a national chess championship.
Graham Chesters, a former professor of French at the University of Hull, has triumphed in the British Senior Chess Championships after a gruelling week of seven six-hour games.
Prof Chesters, 68, has played since the age of nine and represented his country in the game as a teenager.
Although he had less time in later life as other priorities took over, his love of the chequered board never went away.
"The attraction for me when I started playing was that I kept winning You find something you're good at and you enjoy it because of that," he said.
"I actually enjoy the game of chess because it's not just playing matches against other people. You can read books and magazines and things like that about it.
"It's the infinite variety. Nothing is ever the same twice and you still have the capacity to be surprised and impressed by a particular game or move."
Prof Chesters, who won the competition jointly with three other players, was surprised at his victory.
He had hoped to use the tournament as training for the Welsh Championship next year, a series he won 50 years earlier.
"I was determined to go back 50 years later because I wasn't sure anyone had done that before," he said.
"There was a time when I played quite seriously and intensively and then you get married, you get a job, you get a mortgage and unless you play professionally – and very few people do – it just gets overtaken. You can't keep up the study."
Since Prof Chesters won in Wales, there have been many changes around the game, even if its core remains the same as ever.
Players can now research each other on the internet – and as it was decades since the academic was in the top flight he was given an unexpected advantage.
When he searched for opponents, he found 50 or 60 records of their previous games.
When they looked him up there were only five games recorded, all from the 1960s.
"On the internet you could see the scores of their games and the moves they played, so you could get a pretty good idea of their style," he said.
"I was at an advantage because I could find out what my opponents were doing and they couldn't do the same to me."
