<Very sad and unexpected news that Peter Parr has passed away. He must have been only 67 years old or so and was an institution in Australian Chess for over 40 years.

Guy (Guy West) has written very eloquently about Peter but I’d like to add a few comments of my own. He was great company, always ready to tell you the latest chess gossip, and like most chess players whenever I was in Sydney I dropped in to his shop for a chat and to rummage through his chaotic collection of books and magazines. Peter and I shared many memories of Australian Chess in the 1970s and 1980s when he was the Olympiad Team Captain and I was our top player and whilst his views were often controversial I can only remember one occasion where we had a significant difference of opinion.

After the 1976 Olympiad in Haifa Peter and I went to England so Peter could visit his parents for a few days and I met his family. His brother David was a strong, if erratic player, who once complained that he was losing games because his opponents were so weak that it was distracting him. His father (Frank Parr) holds several chess records, such as having played in the most British Championships, and was very set in his ways. To the Parr family doing the same thing for 40 years was nothing unusual.

As a player Peter was pretty good without ever making it to the top in Australian Chess. At one Olympiad I can remember him reminding the team members that he had in fact beaten the Olympiad team 2.5-1.5 at the Doeberl Cup that year.

As an arbiter he was excellent and was duly recognised by FIDE with a place on their Rules Commission. He was Chief Arbiter of the Doeberl Cup for many years in the days before computers when arbiters used pairing cards and had to be both quick and accurate. As has been noted by others he was not officious but used his common sense - for instance in one Australian Championship where I was foolishly playing on with KvK against Max Fuller he came up to the board and politely suggested that it may be a good idea if we agreed to a draw.

As a journalist he was excellent as running of his column in the Sydney Morning Herald for 41 years will attest, and was always up with the latest news. After Bernie Johnson stopped producing “Chess in Australia” (the national chess magazine) Peter stepped into the breach with his upgraded “Australian Chess Magazine” which ran for many years also.

As a administrator he was forthright and efficient and a genuine “ideas person” who always had some new plan on the go to improve chess. He was made a life member of both the ACF and the NSWCA and deservingly awarded the OAM in 1997.

As a businessman he was effective even if his methods were old-fashioned and his paperwork was all hand-written. Perhaps he took after Cecil Purdy in that regard as Cecil’s Chess Shop was just as messy as Peter’s.

He was very good at self-promotion and his memory of facts and events could rarely be faulted. Over the years many famous chess identities passed through his shop, from former world champions to Presidents of FIDE. Peter knew them all and made them welcome to Australia.

It would be fair to say that over the last 40 years Peter, like no-one else, has lived at the centre of Australian Chess on a daily basis. His knowledge and memories of chess over that time were a great resource which tragically is now lost to us and passes into history.

Perhaps the ACF may consider some suitable way of recognising Peter’s contribution to Australian Chess, such as naming the next Australian Championships or Australian Open in his honour, as was done with Steiner in 1976. We can only hope.

Australian Chess has lost one of it’s truly great characters and promoters and we are all the poorer for his passing.

Peter Parr RIP.

Robert Jamieson>

The rumors were that he was some sort of gay tri-sexual person, with no girlfriend, and unstable. I'm not sure if that contributed to his death, but he was apparently found alone for a few days.

He was also known to meddle into issues that he knew nothing about, and things that did not involve him.

Beyond that, he was an extremely bad judge of people, and bad judge of character. Sticking to his limited world of only selling chess books for 40 years, didn't seem to help him much.

He probably had a very boring life, with meddling & gossip being his main outlets, when he wasn't involved with the gay lifestyle. His store was located in the center of Sidney, which is a huge gay location, where they do the gay parades, etc. Hopefully he wasn't involved with any of the young chessplayers, like Robert Snyder was.

Apparently, nobody knows exactly why he died.

<Luceana....The rumors were that he was some sort of gay tri-sexual person, with no girlfriend, and unstable. I'm not sure if that contributed to his death, but he was apparently found alone for a few days....>

followed soon after by this:

<....He probably had a very boring life, with meddling & gossip being his main outlets, when he wasn't involved with the gay lifestyle. His store was located in the center of Sidney (sic), which is a huge gay location, where they do the gay parades, etc....>

On the one hand, you state that he was rumoured to have been involved in that way of life, then on the other, adamantly aver that <was> Parr's preference.

He was an adult, living life on his terms--who cares what the man did, so long as he did not bother anyone? This is, after all, not a case like that of Robert Snyder or Brian Eley, both of whom pursued children.

If not, then are you just speaking in vague generalities?

What was concerning to many people was that he would often have many young chess players stay over at his chess store, late into the night.

Nobody is anti-gay here, but it is a dangerous mix, having many young chess players staying late at the shop of a gay bookstore owner. Who knows what really happened.

<Nobody is anti-gay here,>

Never met the man and do not care about his private life.

<....Also, his gossiping, and meddling into other peoples business, and issues that he knew nothing about, did not help his cause either. Those were all feminine, or gay traits, from people that have too much time on their hands....>

I have known men who were straight, and hopeless gossips--worse than the stereotypical female busybody who knows your business better than she knows herself, to hear her tell it.

<Luceana> it seems that meddling and gossiping are your main outlets. Add to that the cowardice implied in attacking someone recently passed away, very convenient.

It is people like you that have ruined society, and destroyed western culture. If you tried your nonsense in any middle eastern country, or even Russia, you wouldn't get very far.

ozmikey's post quoting Guy West is how it's done. Rumours, gossip, fabrication and personal feelings towards a personal sexual alignment are left out. If he was gay so what?

He does not seem to have led a boring life as you speculate. In fact he seems to have devoted most of it to chess. Rest in Peace mate.

And onto chess...

This bit from ozmikey:

"Peter also played an honest and dignified role during the Brilliancy Prize controversy at the 1992 Manila Olympiad."

These are the two games in question.

The two threads make interesting reading.

I Rogers vs G Milos, 1992

and

Kasparov vs P Nikolic, 1992

In typical; C.G. Kibitzing fashion they struggle in the Rogers thread to discover who played the other game but eventually get there.

In a nutshell the controversy was Kasparov and Rogers were on the committee to judge best game. Rogers stepped down because his game was submitted. Kasparov stayed (even though he had submitted 3 games) and apparently bullied the rest of the committee into picking his game.

A few comments, from someone here who knew Peter quite well over the years (and was well aware of his faults, incidentally):

1. There have been plenty of such rumours over the years about several people who've been involved in Australian chess. Never, ever did I hear Peter's name mentioned in that regard. For another thing, he (unlike many of his generation) was never involved in coaching the game to kids, which would have been a pretty obvious avenue for anyone that way inclined.

2. As far as I know Peter was gay, but, as most people must surely be aware by now, there is no correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia.

3. The concern about young players taking part in the tournaments at his shop was utterly different. As far as I know, I was actually the first person to bring it up (when on the NSWCA council in the nineties), so I know whereof I speak here. The reason why the NSW Junior League (which I was representing on the council at the time) was opposed to having various official tournaments held at Peter's shop was that Surry Hills at the time was a dangerous area at night-time, with plenty of derelicts and muggers around after dark. Peter's shop was a good ten minutes' walk from Central Station, on a side street, and we were worried about the safety of kids playing in events there.

My main critique was not the gay factor, or the kids hanging around, even though porno videos were possibly within reach of the kids.

The fact that Peter seemed to be meddling, and insert himself into issues that did not involve him, was more of a concern. Often times he jumped the gun, and involved himself into other people's business, when he knew nothing about it.

Some of the other posts here are just ignorant, from people who didn't even know him.

As to meddling, the difference between that and benign intervention is often in the eye of the beholder. In many cases, I actually think it was a case of him taking responsibility for things when others couldn't be bothered.