John Derek Beasley

John Derek Beasley (England, *15.02.1940 - † 03.03.2024)

He has written a few books, such as "The Mathematics of Games",

Writer of chess books and chess composer (study composer)

,"The Ins and Outs of Peg Solitaire" or "Endgame Magic".

Writer and chess composer

As far as chess problems are concerned, on the one hand,

he held for years an endgame studies column in French magazine "grafikes"

and he also edited by himself an endgame magazine "British Endgame Study News" (BESN),

of which all issues can be downloaded from his website.

He wrote an excellent book about Artur Mandler's studies, "Depth and Beauty" and another,

more recent one about the endgame studies of Richard Réti.

On the other hand, he is also interested in fairy chess variants and fairy problems.

He was one of the editors of the Chess Variants magazine, of which all issues can be downloaded from George P. Jelliss' website.

He also wrote "51 Flights of Chess Fancy", a booklet about Progressive Chess and works about Losing Chess endgames.

He usually composed well-pointed studies or problems.

Source: Website ARVES (arves.org)

Death

He had cancer for some while, but was well enough to publish his last book a few months ago.

Publications
John Beasley is co-author of the books with Timothy Whitworth

Endgame Magic (Bastford 1996, (ISBN 071347971X)),
The Ins and Outs of Peg Solitaire (Oxford University Press 1985 (ISBN 019286145X)),
The Mathematics of Games (OUP, 1989 (ISBN 0486449769)).
In 1978, Bealey republished and supplemented the famous book by Phillipp Klett (1833-1910): Ph. Klett's Chess Problems with an Introduction to the Theory of the Chess Problem, published in 1878 and containing 112 compositions.