John Roycroft

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Arthur John Roycroft, (born July 25, 1929) an English chess endgame study composer, international judge, and author. He is co-founder and member of the Chess Endgame Study Circle, founded on March 16, 1965, publishing the studies magazine End Game (EG). Roycroft was its publisher for the first 102 issues, from July 1965 until 1991. Since then, the Dutch-Flemish ARVES, the Alexander Rueb Vereniging voor Schaakeindspelstudie has been publisher, but Roycroft stayed as editor-in-chief until 2007, superseded by Harold van der Heijden. Roycroft's adaptation of the Guy–Blandford code in the 70s resulted in the GBR code, an efficient way to index any chess position, in particular endgame studies.

=Endgame Tablebases= John Roycroft advised Ken Thompson in endgame tablebases generation with four and five pieces. For queen and pawn against queen he published some results in 1986, years ahead of full tablebase output on CD.

=Selected Publications=

1970 ...

 * John Roycroft (1972). Test tube chess. Stackpole Books

1980 ...

 * John Roycroft (1981). The Chess Endgame Study. Dover Publications
 * John Roycroft (1983). A Prophecy Fulfilled. EG, Vol. V, No. 74
 * John Roycroft (1984). The GBR code. ICCA Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1
 * John Roycroft (1984). Two Bishops against Knight. EG, Vol. 5, No. 75
 * John Roycroft (1984). A Proposed Revision of the ‘50-Move Rule’. ICCA Journal, Vol. 7, No. 3
 * John Roycroft (1985). Chess-Endgame Data-Base`Oracles': Necessary and Desirable Features. ICCA Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2
 * John Roycroft, Ken Thompson (1986). Queen and Pawn on a2 against Queen. Chess Endgame Consultants and Publishers, London
 * John Roycroft, Ken Thompson (1986). Queen and Pawn on a6 against Queen. Chess Endgame Consultants and Publishers, London
 * John Roycroft, Ken Thompson (1986). Queen and Pawn on b7 against Queen. Chess Endgame Consultants and Publishers, London
 * Jaap van den Herik (1986). Roycroft's 5-Man Chess Endgame Series. ICCA Journal, Vol. 9, No. 3
 * John Roycroft (1987). Expert Against Oracle. Machine Intelligence 11
 * John Roycroft (1987). The Experimental Positions of Ideas in Knowledge Synthesis. ICCA Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2
 * John Roycroft (1989). The Computer is at it again - Interfering with the Endgame! Britisch Chess Magazine, Vol. 109, No. 10

1990 ...

 * John Roycroft (1990). How to Treat Endgame Databases. ICCA Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2
 * John Roycroft (1990). Identifying Three Types of Zugzwang. ICCA Journal, Vol. 13, No. 4
 * John Roycroft (1991). A Postscript to the Computer's Involvement. Britisch Chess Magazine, Vol. 111, No. 2
 * John Roycroft (1991). A Side-Effect of new Database Knowledge. ICCA Journal, Vol. 14, No. 3
 * John Roycroft (1991). A Use for Endgame Databases? ICCA Journal, Vol. 14, No. 4
 * John Roycroft, Don Beal (1991). To Make Dumb Endgame Databases Speak. Advances in Computer Chess 6
 * Richard K. Guy, John Roycroft, Kenneth Solja (1996). Richard Guy's Chess Endgame Studies. Prime Actions

=External Links=
 * John Roycroft from Wikipedia
 * John Roycroft | LinkedIn
 * Chess Composers | Arthur John Roycroft
 * EG issues 1-152

=References= Up one level