John Nunn at 50 December 29, 2004
Click "Stop" on your browser to stop the music and "Refresh" to start it.

The infant John Nunn with his parents and older brother David

We at ChessBase would like to congratulate our chess puzzle expert, friend and associate GM Dr John Nunn on his forthcoming 50th birthday (the big day will be on April 25th). John, of course, is the man who is currently enchanting our readers in this Christmas Puzzle section with his proof games.

John learnt to play chess at the age of four from his father, and soon showed considerable promise. When he was nine he won the London Under-12 Championship, which was the first of many successes in British junior tournaments. He won the British Under-14 Championship in 1967, at the age of 12, and went on to gather several other titles, including the European Junior Championship in 1974/5.

Taking an early interest in Nature and his surroundings

In 1978 John gained the grandmaster title and in the same year was awarded his doctorate in mathematics for a thesis on Finite H-spaces. We’re not quite sure what H-spaces are, but we did ask John at some stage which was the more difficult task – to become a grandmaster or earn a PhD. He looked at us in disbelief at the simplicity of that question. "To become a grandmaster, of course!" The history of chess has produced fewer grandmasters than the number of PhDs churned out by some universities in a single year.

In 1980 John won the British Championship, and in 1981 he left the academic world to pursue a career as a professional chess player. Over the next 15 years he won many top-level tournaments, including Biel (twice), Hastings (three times) and Wijk aan Zee (three times).

With an early chess trophy

One of John’s finest performances was at the 1984 Thessaloniki Olympiad, where he won three individual gold medals, one for the highest rating performance of the Olympiad, one for the best score on board two (he scored 10/11) and one for winning the problem-solving event on a free day.

At his peak, in 1989, John was rated in the world’s top ten. This was also the year in which he achieved another excellent result, finishing sixth in the World Cup series of tournaments, which included all the world’s leading players.

In the mid-1990s John's career changed direction as, together with GM Murray Chandler and FM Graham Burgess, he founded Gambit Publications, which has since become one of the world’s leading chess publishers. In 1995 he married the German woman player Petra Fink, and a few years later their son Michael was born. With his family and business responsibilities growing, John started to play less in tournaments, although he still participated actively in the German Bundesliga and was instrumental in helping Lübeck win three consecutive Bundesliga titles. His last rated event was the 2002/3 Bundesliga, in which he played in every round and scored an excellent 11.5/15.

In early 2004 John announced his retirement from professional chess. However, he is still heavily involved in chess in various ways. His career in chess problem-solving, which had already included three British Championships and a second gold medal at the Novi Sad Olympiad in 1990, really took off after his ‘retirement’. In September 2004 he won the World Problem Solving Championship, and gained a solving grandmaster title to add to his over-the-board title.

John has recently taken an interest in problem composition and has created a number of interesting helpmates. Two of these, given below, were composed especially for his 50th birthday celebrations (you will notice that the pieces form the numbers 5 and 0).

John Nunn, Original 2004 Helpmate in four moves Two solutions

John Nunn, Original 2004 Helpmate in four moves a) Diagram; b) black knight on b4

In a helpmate in four, Black moves first. Both sides make four legal moves co-operatively so that after White’s 4th move Black is mated.

Study composing tournament

As part of his 50th birthday celebrations, John has announced a study composing tourney for original chess endgame study compositions (i.e. ‘White to play and win’ or ‘White to play and draw’ compositions). Entries should be sent to the controller Brian Stephenson by post at 9, Roydfield Drive, Waterthorpe, Sheffield S20 7ND, United Kingdom or by e-mail to bstephen[at]freeuk.com. Any composers (or budding composers) have plenty of time to create endgame studies for this tourney – the closing date for entries is 30th October 2005.

Full details of the event may be found at the BDS web site.

And now for today's Christmas puzzle, supplied by John Nunn.

Proof game 6: Position after White’s 6th move

As usual you can print out the three puzzles on this page and solve them on a chessboard.

Christmas Puzzle Challenge

Many readers are writing in to ask about the Christmas Puzzle Challenge, many are sending in solutions because they fear they might be missing something. Not to worry, on January 1st you will receive exact instructions. Basically the contest will require that you send in the solutions of some of the problems published during the Christmas Puzzle week. And you will have quite a lot of time to solve them. So do not panic, just keep track of the problems you have worked out, so you don't have to do so all over again when the contest is running.

Frederic Friedel