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Terry J Free

Number of games in database: 5
Years covered: 1964 to 1978
Overall record: +5 -0 =0 (100.0%)*
   * Overall winning percentage = (wins+draws/2) / total games.

Most played openings
C15 French, Winawer (2 games)


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TERRY J FREE
New Zealand

[what is this?]
This blind and partially deaf player qualified for the World chess championship for the blind.

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 page 1 of 1; 5 games  PGN Download 
Game  ResultMoves YearEvent/LocaleOpening
1. T J Free vs R Weatherly 1-022196471st NZ Ch ReserveC02 French, Advance
2. W A Rodney Brown vs T J Free 0-1251972Correspondence TtC35 King's Gambit Accepted, Cunningham
3. T J Free vs A Pomeroy 1-0261973Correspondence TtB96 Sicilian, Najdorf
4. T J Free vs M Winkelmann 1-0641975WCC for the BlindC15 French, Winawer
5. T J Free vs P Mataga 1-0171978North Island ChC15 French, Winawer
  REFINE SEARCH:   White wins (1-0) | Black wins (0-1) | Draws (1/2-1/2) | Free wins | Free loses  

Kibitzer's Corner
Oct-17-06  Benzol: This is the player <Richard Taylor> was talking about in the <Kibitzers Cafe>.

Terry was totally blind and partially deaf all his life. The games given show what a great chess talent he possessed.

I can remember watching him play at the Auckland Chess Centre when I was a teenager in the mid 1970's. Sadly he's no longer with us but his games live on, a tribute to his memory.

Oct-18-06
Premium Chessgames Member
  Richard Taylor: I played Terry in the 80s as a teenager - I had one win against him he had one win and we drew one other game.

He was a talented player.

The point I made was that - while in those days (I was only 15 or so) I thought of blindness as something "terrible" - more recently, and by reading "An Anthropologist on Mars" by Oliver Sacks who is a neurologist, I now realise that the blind live in a different way and are not "handcicapped" per se. They see the world differently. Terry's hands would move rapidly over the pieces (the White pieces were bigger than the Black -or vica versa) as he was considering his move - and one day I got him with a knight fork - he said - there was small crowd: "I didn't see that!" and every one laughed.

Nowadays I understand that his way of 'seeing' was not only semantically but exsitentialy different to our (sighted) way of seeing.

These games are great indeed.

Nov-04-06
Premium Chessgames Member
  Jonathan Sarfati: I didn't realize he was gone. I met him at one Congress, 1987-88 I think, and remember him surprising a respectable player with a combination. IIRC, Bob Gibbons told me that when driving him somewhere, Terry knew that he'd taken a wrong turn.
Jul-04-09  myschkin: . . .

A blind chess player surveys the board

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidf...

How Visually Impaired Play Chess

http://www.ibca-info.org/how-visual...

Braille set: http://www.braillechess.org.uk/acti...

Jun-07-13  Fiona Macleod: I think that I shall never see

A player as great as Terry J. Free

Free who plays but cannot see

Yet all his games are of a brilliancy

Pawns are moved by patzers like me

But I can never win against Terry J. Free

Mar-22-18
Premium Chessgames Member
  Richard Taylor: <myschkin><Fiona Macleod> He was very nice man. I haven't since seen a blind player. I don't know how he knew what his time situation was. Perhaps someone told him.

Thanks for that link. We need to be aware of blind playing chess and also others who have disabilities. Thanks to both and for the witty poem.

Mar-22-18
Premium Chessgames Member
  Richard Taylor: I played Terry in the 60s. I don't know why I typed 80s! He wasn't around as far as I know then. So I played him about 1964 or possibly earlier. I may have some games somewhere I played with him. The Club we played at or the rooms are gone. It was at His Majesty's Arcade in central Auckland, since gone, a magnificent place where they had a theatre also.
Jan-20-25
Premium Chessgames Member
  Richard Taylor: Weatherley also played at the then Auckland Chess Club in Queen Street, His Majesty's Arcade (demolished in the 90s by the Rogernomicas and Prebblers. He was in a wheel chair. He had to be helped up and players took his chair up. This is in the early 60s he may have played earlier.

Terry was in that club. Pomeroy was a classics scholar and well educated and into all sorts of things beside chess. I cant recall playing him.

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