Check out chess player Steve's new move
A Shropshire chess player has made an adventurous new move – into the literary world.
Steve Wilson, who plays for the Shrewsbury-based Telepost Chess Club, has published "Welcome To My World of Chess" which includes some of his own games, puzzles, and some games by the great American world champion Bobby Fischer, his all-time favourite player.
"At junior school, aged 10, I watched two boys playing a game I had not seen before," he says.
In the family he had played other games like draughts, Ludo, snakes & ladders, and cards, but never chess.
"Having watched the boys I had a lightbulb moment. I picked up the game of chess very easily and have never put it down."
At school, Steve says he was not academically turned on to any of his subjects, but adds: "I could not be called a 'duffer' because I was the king pin in chess. I was the one everyone wanted to beat.
"I knew if I played chess and could play well I was going to be taken far more seriously.
"It was a few years after leaving school that I joined Wolverhampton Chess Club and quickly realised I was just an average club player. That didn't stop me however from taking the odd scalp from time to time."
In his 30 or so years at the Wolverhampton club he was a team captain, tournament secretary, and club secretary.
Taking early retirement from the Royal Mail in 2015, Steve and his wife, who had lived in Fallings Park, Wolverhampton, moved to a small hamlet in Mid Wales, which meant missing out on chess clubs – something which changed when they settled in Shrewsbury two years later.
He says his book came to fruition when he switched the way he recorded his chess games in 2019, abandoning the old traditional descriptive notation for recording moves, and using the modern algebraic notation which is now virtually universal.
Steve plays in Division Two of Shropshire Chess League, where face-to-face chess action has only recently resumed following suspension due to the Covid pandemic.
Steve's book, which also includes a chapter on leading Grand Masters, is available from him directly at stevew16051805@gmail.com or from www.youcaxton.co.uk and costs £8.99.
