Glarean Magazin

.

«Who is the Champion of the Champions?»

Im Mittelpunkt dieses hauptsächlich englisch-, teils auch deutschsprachigen Fernschach-Buches steht das Turnier der Weltmeister, zu dem der Internationale Fernschachbund ICCF im Jahre 2001 alle lebenden Fernschach-Weltmeister einlud. Das Teilnehmerfeld bestand aus: Fritz Baumbach, Hans Berliner, Tönu Oim, Vytas Palciauskas, Horst Rittner, Grigori Sanakojew, Jörn Sloth, Gert Timmerman und Michail Umanski. Alle neun Weltmeister trugen mit Partieanalysen zum Gelingen dieses Buches bei. Abgerundet wird das Werk mit kurzen Biographien der bereits gestorbenen sowie der erst nach 2001 ermittelten Weltmeister. Ein abschließendes Kapitel in deutscher Sprache bietet einen unterhaltsamen Querschnitt durch 50 Jahre Fernschach. (Verlagsinfo)

Aus dem Vorwort:
«During the jubilee year of the International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) in the year 2000 a unique tournament was started. All nine living correspondence chess world champions had participated. Something which is not possible in over the board chess became reality in correspondence chess. The unspoken question was: Who is the strongest correspondence chess player in the universe? Chess players all over the world tracked the games on the internet with increased excitement. A wish to publish these interesting high class games in a tournament book was often expressed.

Ex-Fernschach-WM Fritz Baumbach

One of the authors, the XI world champion Dr Fritz Baumbach, seized this idea and expanded the thought. Not just the nine participants of the tournament should be introduced to the readers. The already deceased world champions Purdy, Ragozin, O’Kelly, Zagorovsky and Estrin are also presented. To round up the champions show the subsequently crowned Hamarat, Bern, van Oosterom and Leotard had to also be included. The next step was to find co-authors preferably with writing experience. After quite some search this was successful. For part 2 Robin Smith from the USA would provide comments and annotations of the 36 games of the jubilee tournament. For the remaining part the Swiss grandmaster Rolf Knobel was available. He translated the articles about the world champions from German into English and enriched them with many comments. The final part 4 of the book, mainly for German speaking readers highlights some stories about the world champions.»

F.Baumbach/R.Smith/R.Knobel: Who is the Champion of the Champions? – Correspondence Chess, 224 Seiten, Exzelsior Verlag, ISBN 978-3-935-80004-4