Forty years ago, Kingston player Mike Tebb died at the board while playing for Kingston. It took a surprise visit from his widow Kate to recall that dreadful night – and to remind those who knew him of what was lost
A couple of weeks ago a woman dropped by at a chess mentoring session for under-11s which Kingston president John Foley and I were running at a local library. She had a pile of old chess books, mostly dating from the 1970s, so ancient they used descriptive notation. But they had clearly been carefully chosen and included Nimzovich’s My System and other classic texts which suggested the owner has been a discriminating book buyer and serious player.
As we talked to our visitor, whose name was Kate Tebb, an extraordinary story emerged. Her husband Mike Tebb (pictured above with his son in the year of his death) had played for Hampton in the 1970s, Kingston in the 1980s and also represented Surrey. John Foley did some research later and found old Surrey team lists which showed him keeping very respectable company in high-level county championship matches, and in the starting line-up for the Surrey Congress in the summer of 1976 his grade is given as 169. He was clearly a very capable player.
Kate told us that Mike had died from cardiac arrest at the board while playing for Kingston in November 1984. She had kept his books for 40 years and now wanted to donate them to the club. What was remarkable was that John Foley, who has been part of the Kingston club for almost 30 years, had never heard a word about this dramatic and appalling night when a routine home match against Slough had ended in tragedy. I have been associated with Kingston for 20 years and had certainly never heard it spoken of. Somehow this tragic event had been hidden away, too grim to contemplate or even recall. Now, on the 40th anniversary of Mike’s death and prompted by Kate Tebb’s visit and her donation of Mike’s beloved chess books, we want to properly remember him.
We turned to Peter Roche, who is a life member of Kingston and has given more than 50 years of dedicated service to the club, and asked him what he remembered about Mike Tebb. Not only did he remember him well and very fondly, but he had been playing alongside him on that fateful night in November 1984. Here are his recollections, spurred by Kate’s visit but perhaps suppressed for all these decades because he felt the remembrance so painful.
“Yes I remember Mike Tebb very well,” says Peter. “He joined Kingston from Hampton and quickly became a popular and well-regarded member. He played mainly in the first team and was very dependable. He helped arrange the summer programme (he was a devotee of five-minute chess). I am sure he shared the captaincy duties. I was present when Mike collapsed. We were playing Slough at Kingston and much to my surprise we had to start without him (he being very reliable). After about 20 minutes he rushed in [the match was being played at the now demolished Quaker Hall in central Kingston] with a hurried apology. He had thought the match was at Slough, where he worked. He started his game. Suddenly there was a commotion as he collapsed at the table.
“Immediately people sprang into action. One of the Slough players attempted resuscitation. We roused the caretaker to get an ambulance and from what I remember it came very quickly. There was a meeting in the next room and some senior police officers came to see if they could help. We contacted his wife to warn her that she must go to the hospital immediately. She had a young family so she had to arrange for them to be looked after.
“John Adams, a member of the club though not playing that evening, was a good friend of Mike’s, and he rang to tell me that Mike had passed away and asked what had happened, so I gave the description I have set out here. A number of us including Chris Clegg, James Pattle and Richard Harris, and I think Chris Carr attended the funeral. Your enquiry has prompted a very sad memory, though I should say that I have often thought over the years about the catastrophe and what a terrible waste of a fine life it was.”
Peter’s recollection of the evening chimed with what Kate had told us. Mike had been feeling slightly fluey a couple of days earlier, and an inquest suggested this had made him susceptible to cardiac arrest. The coroner’s report gave the cause of death as viral myocarditis, which can develop when the flu virus (on very rare occasions) attacks the heart muscle. He had played squash on the day of the Slough match and this, plus the need to rush to Kingston when he discovered the match was not being played in Slough, may have increased the susceptibility, though Kate says this is a moot point.
She says Mike was effervescent, exuberant, enthusiastic, ebullient – “all the E words!”, as Kate puts it. He was clearly dynamic: who else would play a game of squash so soon after feeling fluey? This assessment of Mike’s personality is borne out by Kingston stalwart (and current first-team Thames Valley captain) David Rowson’s recollections of him.
“It is very touching that Kate Tebb brought the books,” says David. “I didn’t know Mike very well as I went to work in Spain in 1981, but I still remember him quite distinctly as a very warm and sociable character with a great sense of humour. In particular I remember that when I returned to the club in the summer after my first year in Spain he joked about how annoying it was that I followed every move with a shout of ‘Ole!’ ” Kate says David Rowson’s anecdote is “absolutely typical of Mike’s humour”.
A few days after that first meeting, at my suggestion Kate visited the small group of us who meet every Wednesday morning to play some friendly social chess at All Saints Church next to Kingston Market Place. Kate talked with Peter Roche for the first time in many years and also gave me a batch of Mike old scoresheets, from which I have extracted the game shown later in this article. The other document she brought was a set of testimonials to Mike she had gathered after his death, and again what comes across is his exuberance and joie de vivre – qualities which make his loss all the more poignant and painful.
“I was really shaken at the dreadful news of Mike’s death,” wrote Hampton player David Mabbs. “Unusually for a chess player, Mike always found time to take an interest in other players as people, He wasn’t one of the intense or introverted players, as are so many of us. He was friendly, gentlemanly and good-humoured. He was also a good player and enjoyed his chess, and he will be greatly missed by his chess counterparts.”
Malcolm Groom, another former Kingston stalwart who now turns out for neighbouring club Surbiton, wrote: “Mike was one of those rare people who are somehow able to inject a sense of good humour and fun into any group of people. He even made turning up on a dark winter’s night after a hard day at the office in order to spend three-and-a-half hours playing chess enjoyable (well almost). I shall miss him very much.”
The then Kingston chair Bill Waterton, in a letter of condolence to Kate, referred to Mike’s “exuberant personality”, and that seems to have been the key to his character. As David Mabbs says, some chess players can be myopic and mean-spirited, soulless and self-obsessed. Mike was the opposite: full of energy and delighting in the game for its own sake, which perhaps explains his love of blitz chess.
Now we have firmly put Mike back in the club’s collective memory bank, we shall continue to celebrate his life and will set up a blitz tournament in his memory. Here are two games – both played at classical time controls – which show how good and resourceful a player Mike was. The first game, a victory in 1970 over the very strong Stephen Berry (who later became a Fide master), is taken from John Saunders’ collection on BritBase. The second I selected from the pile of scoresheets handed to me by Kate Tebb. The succinct annotations in the latter game, written in pen in a small, neat hand on the scoresheet, are Mike Tebb’s own.
Stephen Moss, Kingston club captain
