A lady living in Leeds, who used to compete in the Yorkshire Easter Congresses of the 1950s, and is also suspected of having been the first female to represent Yorkshire at chess, has died as a result of coronavirus at the age of 97.

She met husband Ronald Wilson (“Ronnie”) Ives while he was posted with the Army Educational Corps in the Netherlands during the Second World War. They returned to Ronnie’s native Pontefract, where his parents still lived, and got married there in 1948.

Ronnie was a chess-player, and also chess contributor to the Yorkshire Evening Post, and because of her husband’s enthusiasm for the game, Corbie took up chess herself.

She was apparently a regular competitor in the Yorkshire Chess Association’s peripatetic Easter Congresses, often (if not always!) being the only female competitor, as for instance in the YCA congress of 1952, in Wakefield, and that of 1954, in Leeds.

The Iveses had moved to Leeds by 1954, which is where their three daughters were born.

Ronnie developed a brain tumour and died, aged 40, in 1964.

Cobie has now succumbed to coronavirus, but after a “good innings”, and reportedly putting out of joint the noses of a number of male chess-players who particularly disliked being beaten by a woman! She leaves three daughters, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

A newspaper report can be found at https://www.wakefieldexpress.co.uk/news/people/tributes-coronavirus-victim-and-remarkable-chess-player-cobie-ives-2534480.

Greater biographical data on Ronnie and Corbie Ives can be found on the Yorkshire Chess history website here.