George Steven Botterill is a British chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 player, writer and philosopher.

Botterill was born in Bradford

Bradford

Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...

 and learned chess at the age of seven.
From 1969 to 1972 he played for Oxford University, and became one of Britain's leading young players.
In 1971 he won the Slater Young Masters tournament at Hastings

Hastings International Chess Congress

The Hastings International Chess Congress is an annual chess congress which takes place in Hastings, England, around the turn of the year. The main event is the Hastings Premier tournament, which was traditionally a 10 to 16 player round-robin tournament. In 2004/05 the tournament was played in the...

, and at Hastings 1971/2 he was the top scorer among the British players with 6.0/15.
Botterill won the 1974 British Championship

British Chess Championship

The British Chess Championship is organised by the English Chess Federation. There are separate championships for men and women. Since 1923 there have been sections for juniors, and since 1982 there has been an over-sixty championship. The championship venue usually changes every year and has been...

 at Clacton, winning the playoff at Llanelli, Wales

Llanelli

Llanelli , the largest town in both the county of Carmarthenshire and the preserved county of Dyfed , Wales, sits on the Loughor estuary on the West Wales coast, approximately west-north-west of Swansea and south-east of the county town, Carmarthen. The town is famous for its proud rugby...

 by a half point over William Hartston

William Hartston

William Roland Hartston is an English chess player who played competitively from 1962 to 1987 with a highest Elo rating of 2515...

 after a seven-way tie for first.
In 1977 Botterill won his second British Championship, this time outright.

Botterill won the Welsh Championship

Welsh Chess Championship

The modern Welsh Chess Championship was inaugurated in 1955.The champion earned a place in the British Championship.-External links:****...

 in 1973 (jointly).
In 1974 he became a lecturer in philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, and began to play for the Welsh international team.
In the Preliminary Group of the European Championship he scored 1½–½ against Dutch top board GM Jan Timman

Jan Timman

Jan Timman is a Dutch chess Grandmaster who was one of the world's leading players from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. At the peak of his career he was considered to be the best non-Soviet player and was known as "The Best of the West"...

 and 1–1 against English top board Hartston.
Botterill played first board for Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 at the 1976 Olympiad

Chess Olympiad

The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event is organised by FIDE, which selects the host nation.-Birth of the Olympiad:The first Olympiad was unofficial...

 and previously represented England at the World Student Team Championship and European Team Championship

European Team Championship

The European Team Championship is an international team chess event, eligible for the participation of European nations whose chess federations are located in zones 1.1 to 1.9...

 of 1973.

Botterill is best known as a chess writer, in particular for his chess opening

Chess opening

A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...

 collaborations with Raymond Keene

Raymond Keene

Raymond Dennis Keene OBE is an English chess Grandmaster, a FIDE International Arbiter, a chess organiser, and a journalist and author.p196 He won the British Chess Championship in 1971, and was the first player from England to earn a Grandmaster norm, in 1974. In 1976 he became the second...

: The Modern Defence (London 1973) and The Pirc Defence (London 1974). He now lectures as a Professor in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield

University of Sheffield

The University of Sheffield is a research university based in the city of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England. It is one of the original 'red brick' universities and is a member of the Russell Group of leading research intensive universities...

.

External links

• Botterill, George Steven at olimpbase.org