David Vincent Hooper (31 August 1915 – 3 May 1998), born in

Reigate Reigate ( ) is a town in Surrey, England, around south of central London. The settlement is recorded in Domesday Book in 1086 as ''Cherchefelle'' and first appears with its modern name in the 1190s. The earliest archaeological evidence for huma ...

, was a British

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

player and writer. As an amateur, he tied for fifth place in the 1949 British Championship at

Felixstowe Felixstowe ( ) is a port town in Suffolk, England. The estimated population in 2017 was 24,521. The Port of Felixstowe is the largest Containerization, container port in the United Kingdom. Felixstowe is approximately 116km (72 miles) northea ...

. He was the British correspondence chess champion in 1944 and the London Chess Champion in 1948. He played in the

Chess Olympiad The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in 2020 an ...

at Helsinki in 1952. Hooper was an expert in the

chess endgame In chess and other similar games, the endgame (or end game or ending) is the stage of the game when few pieces are left on the board. The line between middlegame and endgame is often not clear, and may occur gradually or with the quick exchange ...

and in chess history of the nineteenth century. He is best known for his chess writing, including ''The Oxford Companion to Chess'' (1992 with

Ken Whyld Kenneth Whyld (6 March 1926 – 11 July 2003) was a British chess author and researcher, best known as the co-author (with David Hooper) of ''The Oxford Companion to Chess'', a single-volume chess reference work in English. Whyld was a str ...

), ''Steinitz'' (Hamburg 1968, in German), and ''A Pocket Guide to Chess Endgames'' (London 1950)

Books by Hooper

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References

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External links

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Obituary

Remembering David Hooper (31-viii-1915 03-v-1998)
1915 births 1998 deaths British chess players English non-fiction writers British chess writers People from Reigate English male non-fiction writers 20th-century chess players 20th-century English male writers {{England-chess-bio-stub