DR remembers FW DeVerteuil with great affection. He was a fine chess player, a true lover of the game and a gentleman of the old school.
He and his wife lived in one of those quaint wooden cottages on Buller Street in Woodbrook where, as an aspiring neophyte, I spent many a pleasant evening playing chess with him and, more truthfully, imbibing from his tremendous knowlege of the game.
Looking back on the many games we played, DR might have been lucky to win a few, but beating Devi, as his friends called him, was not the real objective of my visits to his home. The fact is, I had been bitten by the chess bug somewhat belatedly, not in my school years but after I had begun to work as a young reporter at the Guardian. And I thought that the quickest way for me to learn the intricacies of the game was to join a chess club and "challenge" its experienced members.
And that is how I made the acquaintance of the "grand old man of chess." DeVerteuil was a venerable member of the RVI Chess Club, then the oldest and most formidable chess club in the country. Indeed, it may have been considered an act of effrontery on my part to enter the elevated sphere of the game as symbolised by the RVI.
At that time, in the early sixties, the club then met at the old Teachers' College on upper St Vincent Street, after leaving its original home at the Royal Victoria Institute. It then comprised a group of the country's most distinguished players, including several national champions.
Devi, who must have been in his early seventies when I joined the club, was still strong enough to earn the respect of his eminent contemporaries, players such as George Stanford, Fred Brassington, Carl Brown, Fred Sabga and Arnold Fortune, all of whom were ex-national champions, some more than once. In this elite company, Devi, was able to hold his own. He never won the title outright; sadly that result eluded him one year when he had to share the honours with Stanford.
However, what really endeared the aging veteran to me was his unfailing and singular readiness to impart his expansive chess knowledge to young members of the club. Indeed, it seemed that Devi took as much pleasure in teaching the game as playing it.
In this respect, the Woodbrook veteran became a kind of one-man institution as he opened his home to any aspiring chessplayer willing to take the game seriously. It may well be the life-long pleasure he himself had derived from the cut and thrust of chess or his appreciation of the mental benefits the game conferred on young devotees that made him unique in this respect.
For me, it was a pleasure to visit his home. I always felt welcome, and our activity over the chessboard, although it sometimes continued late into the night, was not the only pleasure I looked forward to. Invariably, Devi would invite me to have dinner with him, a meal which his wife prepared with obvious affection. Over the table, he would recount stories from the local history of the game and the close encounters, victories and defeats, he had experienced during his own marathon career.
As a player, Devi's real strength lay in the fascinating tactics of the endgame, and his unfailing emphasis in teaching chess to youngsters was the vital importance of learning, if not mastering, this section of the game.
The RVI and the hegemony it once enjoyed over the T&T chess world are now long-faded memories. The stalwarts who kept its colours flying have passed away with the sole exception of Fortune who, after a long layoff, is now mounting a hopeful and energetic comeback.
The RVI, with its elitist image and background, never attracted a younger generation of players to keep it alive. These newcomers migrated instead to the clubs which sprouted in the dying years of RVI and after.
However, thanks to the late Lucio Araujo, president of the Knights Chess Club, the memory of Devi lives on in an open tournament that has become one of the most popular events on the annual chess calendar. Now in its 22nd year, the FW DeVerteuil Memorial Open Tournament, organised by Knights, comes off shortly at the RHAND Credit Union building on Abercromby Street.
Araujo who himself has left a legacy of progress in the sport, had been one of those youngsters who benefited from Devi's selfless and endearing tutelage. The T&T chess world owes Araujo a lasting debt of gratitude for his enlightened leadership of Knights and for the deserving tribute he conferred on the grand old man of chess.