Sadly, the WCU has recently been made aware of the death of David Andrew Bennion.
The Management Board wish to send David’s relatives and friends our deepest condolences on their sad loss.
Below is a biography by his friend Charles Higgie.
Sadly I had to say bye bye to a chess playing friend on Wednesday 16th July 2025. His nieces wore a pendant in the shape of a King and there was a floral tribute in the shape of a Knight.
David Andrew Bennion “Dave” lived most of his life in Ruabon, near Wrexham. Born 23th September 1960, he completed one year at Keele University where he played bass and drums in an amateur punk rock band. This was reflected at his funeral, which included Rebel Waltz by The Clash and Do Anything You Wanna Do by Eddie & the Hot Rods. In later life his musical taste broadened, to include all sort of popular and classical music from all era. He was interested in a wide variety of topics, including current affairs and politics, but his main passion in life was chess.
Both Dave and myself were members of Wrexham Chess Club in the 1980s
I personally gave up playing competitive team chess from the birth of my daughter in May 1992 to her going to university in 2010. These seem to have been the best years of Dave in his chess career, when he represented Wales and played in tournaments literally all over the country and all over the world. He regularly contested the Welsh Championship, including Hensol Park 2006, where he shared 5th place with 4.5 out of 6. He contested it again in in Hensol Park in 2007 and in Cardiff in 2009.
But his greatest triumph was not in Britain. The highest rated player he ever beat was Hungarian Grandmaster Emil Anka on 18th June 2004 in the USA National Open in Las Vagas. Dave was also the lowest rated player Emil Anka ever lost too. Dave won in 32 moves with the black side of a Tarrasch variation of the French Defence. I include a link to this game here. https://www.365chess.com/game.
For anyone wondering why white resigned the final position, Dave is threatening 33……Re1+ 34. Rxe1 dxe1#. White cannot play 33. Rxd2 as 33…..Re1 is mate. 33. Kf1 is met with 33…..Nd3 renewing the threat of Re1+ and again 34. Rxd2 is met with 34……Re1#
His FIDE chess rating peaked at 2107 in April 2007. Even at his death he still had a respectable rating of 1959.
His modesty was such that I only learned of these achievements after his death.
When I returned to playing league chess in 2010, I played for Penyffordd where Dave was also a player. After a year or two I left to set up my own team. Dave also left to play for Oswestry in the Shropshire League. I myself then started to play for Oswestry and was reunited with him, and towards the end of the decade became his captain and would regularly ferry him about. We also played together for Shropshire in the 4NCL National League at this time.
Dave gave up team chess when covid struck in 2020. Unlike most other chess players, he never got into playing chess online. He didn’t go back to playing team chess after covid went.
However on his FIDE profile https://players.chessbase.com/
As a chess player Dave had a very interesting style. He would frequently sacrifice material for an attack. When it came off it was most impressive, but when it didn’t he looked like a beginner. I remember one Shropshire player being amazed and saying how he went over his loss to Dave with a computer. The computer thought Dave’s sacrifice was unsound. Yet the computer couldn’t find any improvement for his opponent, and suddenly a dozen or so moves later the computer agreed Dave had a winning position, suggesting that the sacrifice had been sound after all.
I used to joke with another chess player, Peter Lovatt, that Dave was the Mikhail Tal of the team and we gave up trying to predict the outcome of one of Dave’s games while he was still playing.
Charles Higgie
