RIP Max Fuller

More sad news for Australian chess, with FIDE Master & former Australian Champion, Australian Open Champion & Australian Junior Champion Max Fuller passing away last week. According to people in Sydney, he unfortunately suffered a stroke on the day of Peter Parr's funeral & was admitted to hospital, where he later had another stroke & passed away.
As with Peter, I really only got to know Max when he was already a well-known figure in the chess community, though it was primarily through my visits to Peter's shop on Thursday nights that I met & got to know Max a little. When he was there, he was always happy to join in conversations about chess, whether it be current events, or some historical event or topic, as well as occasionally join in the blitz sessions when he felt like a game (and of course the group was most accommodating when Max wanted to join in the blitz - he was often able to 'jump the queue' to be next in line to challenge the previous winner).
Max always seemed like a well spoken person & was Australia's first real chess professional, travelling overseas in the late 1960s & early 1970s when he was one of the best players in the country (if not the best), playing in events such as the British Championship (where he twice finished in second place). One other special aspect of Max's chess is that he took a substantial amount of time off chess in the late 1980s & most (if not all) of the 1990s, only to return to chess in the early 2000s & finish in a tie for first for the 2005 NSW Championship (although he did lose a playoff to Andrew Bird). Another tremendous loss for the Australian chess community in a year that may be best remembered for those who sadly passed away.

Max at a tournament in 1984, complete with lit cigarette (how times have changed). Photo by William Anderson Smith

I suppose in some ways Max was in part responsible for my more recent transition away from wild tactical positions & towards more positional considerations, as the occasional blitz games we played at Peter Parr's shop usually ended with me being on the wrong side of a positional grind, with the occasional tactical oversight from Max allowing me to win the occasional game or two. It was only when I decided to show one of Max's games to some of my chess students that I started to realise how important he was to the history of Australian chess, as well as being an influence on my own chess career.
The game in question was the following game against V Solanki from the 1987 Australian Open, which I sourced from Michael Salter's book How Good is Your Chess? (which in turn is a compilation of various articles he had written for the NSWJCL magazine, using a format similar to the one initially employed by Leonard Barden & later used by others such as Danny King). It is a great example of how to achieve an advantage from a relatively quiet looking position, without giving your opponent any chance of counterplay!

RIP Peter Parr

Unfortunately one of the characters of Australian Chess, Peter Parr, passed away around a week ago. A thread on ChessChat includes words by many who knew him much better than I did & is well worth a read for anyone interested in Australian chess.
Although I have only known of Peter relatively recently (the last 15-20 years), I thought I would share my thoughts on him and how I saw his contribution to the chess community.
I only came onto the chess scene in the early 1990s, in my final years of high school, so Peter's previous exploits as an arbiter at the Doeberl Cup in Canberra, as well as his shop & chess centre at locations other than Surry Hills & Redfern were before my time in chess. To be honest, I'm not sure exactly when I first met Peter, but presumably it would be when I first walked down the stairs to the basement shop he had in Surry Hills in Sydney sometime in the early to mid 1990s. These early memories are fairly vague, as it would have just been a visit to a shop that happened to sell chess books & products, rather than books or others items in general. The late 1990s was when I really got to know Peter & spent more time at his shop Chess Discount Sales in Surry Hills. This happened as it became a regular meeting place on Thursday nights - I would often meet up with various friends in the chess community, such as Nick Kordahi, Greg Canfell, Eddy Lee, Michael Pandelas, Theos Rippis & many others. On Thursday nights Peter kept his shop open late & for many years there was a regular 'loser off' table of blitz going on when I arrived. Not only was it a great place to meet up with friends, but it was a great opportunity to play against some fantastic players & test one's skills against the likes of Max Fuller, Steve Kerr, Pat Halpin & others who might be at Peter's on a Thursday night.
I also represented Chess Discount Sales in the NSW Grade matches on year in the under 2000 division, in what was essentially a team of friends who happened to meet up at CDS on Thursday to play chess before sometimes heading elsewhere in the city for dinner, a movie, or whatever other form of entertainment took our fancy. Peter was more than happy to leave his shop open later than usual on Thursday nights to allow us to play our home games at his shop. From memory he also paid the entry fee for the team to enter the tournament! This competition turned out to be a great learning experience for me & it turned into a great boost for my rating! Under the competition rules, the board order had players playing mostly in rating order, although there could be up to a 50 point difference between players who could 'swap' boards (ie: player on board 2 could be 49 points LOWER rated than board 3 & this would be fine according to the rules). As it turned out, the vast majority of friends who played in the team were all rated within 50 points of one another, so we came up with a plan to try to maximise the number of points we scored. The plan was to put me on board one (in spite of being the lowest rated in the team) as a 'sacrificial lamb', which would allow the others on boards 2-4 to have a better chance of winning games & as a result, potentially have a better overall result. Of course it turned out that the competition coincided with a purple patch in my own form & I scored around 60% on board 1 against players that were around 300 points higher rated than me & as a result of this & other events I played around that time, my ACF rating skyrocketed from the mid 1600s to the low 1900s!
As for Peter the person, he was always happy to talk about anything chess-related & always seemed to know the latest local chess gossip, as well as what was going on around the world in chess. He was always happy to give a discount on anything I purchased from his shop (and the majority of books in my chess library were purchased from Peter's shop), as the shop name would suggest. He also had a good memory of events in the past, particularly those that he was somehow involved with, whether directly or indirectly. When it came to 'official' duties, he was always quick to remind people of his various awards & titles, of which he was obviously so proud. The main one of these being his Order of Australia medal, which he received in the late 1990s for services to chess. He was also happy to remind people that he was an International Arbiter & often served on a variety of FIDE committees & panels. His regular Monday column in the Sydney Morning Herald was always useful for keeping up with local news, particularly in the days before the internet &he didn't mind including an occasional mention of noteworthy performances from his Thursday regulars in weekend or club events.
Peter will be sorely missed by the chess community, particularly in Sydney, while his dream of once again having a chess centre in the Sydney CBD has yet to eventuate, there is still a possibility that something of this nature might end up happening one day in the future. I am not sure what will happen to his shop & business, but chess in Australia would be a poorer place if it were to disappear.
Below is a photo of Peter receiving his Order of Australia Medal, which comes from the cover of one of the chess magazines he used to produce, Chess in Australia.