John Roycroft

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 remained its chief editor until 2007 when Harold van der Heijden took over. 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.

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