Random Posts

Friday, May 8, 2020

Anne Sunnucks

     WIM Patricia Anne Sunnucks (February 21, 1927 - November 22, 2014) was a chess book author and three-time British Womens Champion (1957, 1958, 1964).  
     She is best known for her Encyclopedia of Chess, a book which received criticism from W.H. Cozens, Gerald Abrahams and Wolfgang Heidenfeld. 
     Cozens claimed it was loaded with “female chauvinism.” Heidenfeld complained too few lines were allocated (or, in Heidenfeld’s term, wasted) to players like Gosta Stoltz (8 lines) and Kurt Richter (4 lines), but Sunnucks gave herself 21 lines and the relatively weak, but very attractive and popular lady player, Lisa Lane who got 43 lines. 
      Heidenfeld stated the book showed not only a lack of judgment to distinguish between what is important and what isn't, but Sunnucks lacked a knowledge of chess history. He also complained the book was overloaded with British chess and added it was “to the detriment of subjects which any moderately informed person knows to be far more important in the chess world." 
     Originally CHESS magazine opined that Sunnuck’s “inexperience shows up, above all, in an almost comical lack of balance.” Later they bellyached about the book devoting three times more space to the Women’s World Championship than to the “World Championship itself” more about Lisa Lane than Spassky.
     Sunnucks was a retired Army Major who served in Hong Kong. While there she organized exchange trips for foreign students, helped young players, sold insurance, enjoyed table tennis and never took chess except when competing. She was also one of those players who never kept her scoresheets. 
     An erratic player, she played for England in several Olympiads. After retirement she sold books and equipment from her house and at various local tournaments. She married Richard Mothersill in about 1984. 
     Sunnucks learned how to play chess at the age of 8, but did not play seriously until the age of 21 when she joined the same chess club as Imre Konig, who became her tutor. 
     By finishing tied for second place in the 1953 British Women's Championship she became one of three British representatives in the 1954 Western European Zonal. Sunnucks earned the WIM title by placing second in the 1954 Western European Zonal. This qualified her advancement, but because she was a major in the Women's Royal Army Corps the authorities would not allow her to travel to the USSR where the 1955 Women's Candidates tournament was being held. She participated in the Women's World Championship cycle two more times, in 1963 and 1966.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)