March 22, 2005

Son held over knife killing of British chess Grand Master By Roger Boyes

A MILD-MANNERED British chess Grand Master has been knifed to death in his kitchen in Sweden.

Police said that the attack was carried out by his disturbed adult son who — immediately after the stabbing — took the family car and rammed it at high speed against a bus shelter.

Simon Webb, 55, was a top exponent of correspondence chess and once ranked seventh in the world in that discipline. He was also a talented board player. “We were playing together in the finals of the Swedish Chess League in Malmö,” Per Soederberg, a leading Swedish player, said. “Simon said goodbye and travelled by train to Stockholm. He must have arrived home at about 1am — and then had an argument with his son.”

Police said that the 25-year-old son, a convicted drug dealer, first pushed his father then reached for a kitchen knife and dug it into Mr Webb’s stomach. The brawl was watched by Mr Webb’s wife who, as soon as the son stormed out of the house, rang the police and tried to stem the bleeding.

The young man grabbed the car keys and drove at high speed through the suburb of Kallhaell, a 30-minute drive from the centre of Stockholm. “He was driving at an incredibly high speed,” Inspector Hans Strindlund said. The son, who has not be named, is now in police custody. “I can confirm the man is a suspect,” a police source said. There appear to be no other suspects.

The international chess world was shocked last night. “He was very promising indeed,” said Raymond Keene, The Times chess correspondent and author of 150 chess books. Although Mr Webb was killed on March 14, the news has only just trickled through to the chess-playing community.

Initial Swedish press reports talked only of the killing of an unnamed international chess writer. In fact Mr Webb wrote only one book — the well- regarded Chess For Tigers — but he is remembered by his neighbours in Kallhaell as an author rather than a chess player.

“He was a calm, gentle man, I can’t believe this has happened,” one neighbour told Expressen newspaper.

Mr Webb started to make an impact on the chess world in the 1960s. He learnt the game at the age of seven and ten years later, in 1966 he was under-18 champion in Britain and fourth in the European junior Championship.

The Webbs were a talented Surrey family and Mr Webb represented England at bridge, partnering his younger brother Roger.

Mr Webb married in the 1970s and moved to Sweden to start a family. Because of the strains on family life of tournament competition, he switched focus to correspondence chess and played his first postal game in 1981.

Correspondence chess is played either by post or by e-mail and is notably slower. As a result there are far fewer correspondence than board Grand Masters — it takes much longer to qualify. Mr Webb was one of around 50 correspondence chess Grand Masters in the world.

“He was a very pleasant man,” Mr Foederberg said. “I can’t imagine now the turmoil he must have been going through at home.

“Swedish press reports say that his son served four years’ prison for drug-related offences and quote the man’s friends as saying that he had an explosive temperament.” Mr Webb’s placid demeanour seems to have camouflaged a very competitive spirit. His book tries to instil the winning instinct, above all in younger players.