Career
After university he entered national service, where he taught reading and writing to soldiers. Because of this he did not have the opportunity to play chess for two years.
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After national service he worked as a French teacher in Lincolnshire. His first big break was when he was invited to the British Chess Championship in York. He competed well for his first time and was nicknamed ‘the Lincolnshire poacher’, a name he protested because he was born in Sheffield.
After his good performance in York, he was invited to participate in the prestigious Hastings tournament and played his famous game against Mikhail Botvinnik, the World Champion at the time. Littlewood started with a promising attack, but he missed an important resource. This enabled Botvinnik to turn the game around and defeat him. Botvinnik includes this game in his autobiographical “Best Games 1947-1970”.
At Hastings, Littlewood also played the American grandmaster Arthur Bisguier, who he beat within 25 moves. After the match his opponent said “What do they feed this guy on? Raw meat?”
Later, Littlewood played at two Olympiads, several Anglo-Dutch matches, and European and World Seniors. He was proud to have defeated the German grandmaster Wolfgang Uhlmann on two occasions. Aside from playing the game, he also managed the national blind chess team. At one stage, he was the Director of Junior Chess.
John Littlewood was the outright winner of the British Senior Chess Championship in 2006 and finished equal first in 2008, when the contest was held at Liverpool’s St. George’s Hall. To be eligible to compete, participants must be sixty and above; he was seventy-seven on this second occasion and one of the oldest players taking part.
He had his own chess column called "Littlewood's Choice", printed once a month in the English Chess Federation magazine.
Read more about this topic: John Littlewood (chess Player)
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