Chess Oscar

 



n 1967, Spanish journalist Jorge Puig Laborda (1928-1989) of Barcelona, and the Association Internationale de la Presse Echiqueenne (International Association of Chess Journalists or AIPE) created what is known as the Chess Oscar.  It is an international award given annually to the best and most entertaining chess player that year.  The winner is selected by votes that are cast by chess journalists from around the world. The voting procedure is to request accredited chess journalists to submit a list of the ten best players of the year.  The award itself currently takes the form of a bronze statuette representing a man in a boat and called “The Fascinated Wanderer.”  The statuatte used to be a lady standing underneath an umbrella.  Now the statuette is named after a character drawn from the 19th century novelist Nikolai Leskov’s most famous work.  The prizes were awarded from 1967 until 1988.  Puig died in 1989 and the Chess Oscar was stopped for several years.  In 1995, it was resumed by 64, the Russian chess magazine.  Its editor-in-chief is Mark Glukhovsky.  The first Chess Oscar went to Grandmaster Bent Larsen in 1967 for his four tournament wins that year.  The award ceremony was held in Madrid, Spain.

Winners:

1967  Bent Larsen

1968  Boris Spassky

1969  Boris Spassky

1970  Bobby Fischer

1971  Bobby Fischer

1972  Bobby Fischer

1973  Anatoly Karpov

1974  Anatoly Karpov

1975  Anatoly Karpov

1976  Anatoly Karpov

1977 Anatoly Karpov

1978  Viktor Korchnoi

1979  Anatoly Karpov

1980  Anatoly Karpov

1981  Anatoly Karpov

1982  Gary Kasparov

1983  Gary Kasparov

1984  Anatoly Karpov

1985  Gary Kasparov

1986  Gary Kasparov

1987  Gary Kasparov

1988  Gary Kasparov

1995  Gary Kasparov

1996  Gary Kasparov

1997  Viswanathan Anand

1998  Viswanathan Anand

1999  Gary Kasparov

2000  Vladimir Kramnik

2001  Gary Kasparov

2002  Gary Kasparov

2003  Viswanathan Anand

2004  Viswanathan Anand

2005  Veselin Topalov

2006  Vladimir Kramnik

2007  Viswanathan Anand

2008  Viswanathan Anand

2009  Magnus Carlsen

2010  Magnus Carlsen

2011  Magnus Carlsen

2012  Magnus Carlsen

2013  Magnus Carlsen

 

The 2012 Chess Oscar was decided in June 2013.  It was based on Carlsen’s 2012 results:

 

2nd place in Tata Steel Tournament

1st at Tal Memorial

2nd at the World Rapid Chess Championship

1st at Grand Masters Final

Highest chess rating, surpassing Kasparov’s best historical mark

1st at the 4th London Chess Classic.

 

6-time Oscar winner Vishy Anand said this of the Chess Oscars, “Winning the Oscars gives you the satisfaction that people have appreciated your games.  In the years when the World Championship didn’t happen, the Oscars gave a sense of order in the chess world.”

 

Another category of the Chess Oscar is best woman.  Judit Polgar has won the women’s Chess Oscar 8 times.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Thomas Crown Affair

Image
  In 1968 the movie entitled The Thomas Crown Affair was released, starring Steve McQueen (1930-1980) as Thomas Crown and Faye Dunaway (1941- ) as Vicki Anderson.  Thomas Crown stages a two million dollar bank heist while Vicki is the insurance investigator who suspects that Crown was the brains behind the bank job.  When Crown invites Vicki to his mansion, she eyes his highly stylized chess set.  Crown asks her, "Do you play?" and she responds "Try me."  By the 12th move they reach a position that occurred in the game Zeissl-Walthoffen, Vienna 1898 (Ruy Lopez, Schliemann variation).  The game played is very seductive (perhaps the sexiest chess scene ever recorded in the movies and lasted over 7 minutes), and just before she is about to mate (she announces "check"), Crown circles the chess board and says, "Let's play something else" and sweeps her off her feet, embracing and kissing.  A different mating game is then played, and I am sure he
Read more

Claude Bloodgood (1937-2001)

Image
  On July 14, 1937, Claude Frizzell Bloodgood III (born Klaus Frizzell Bluttgutt III) was born in Norfolk, Virginia.  His parents were  Klaus Frizzell Bluttgutt , Jr. (1909-1968) and Margaret Belma Howell (1910-1969), married in 1932.  Bloodgood later claimed that he was born on July 24, 1924 (Bastille Day) in La Paz, Mexico. [source: H ellman,  The Chess Artist , 2003, p. 280] Bloodgood had a sister, Lois Elizabeth Bloodgood Carlton (1942-2005).  She became a lawyer. Bloodgood learned chess at the age of 5, taught by his father. As a young man, he was arrested several times for burglary. In 1952, at the age of 15, Bloodgood robbed a convenience store using his father's German Luger pistol.  He was tried as an adult and released in 1954. In 1954, Bloodgood joined the marines.  He was sent to Okinawa where he was trained as a sharpshooter.  [source: Hoffman, King's Gambi t, 2007, p. 175]  He served in the U.S. Marines until October 1957. In 1955, Bloodgood claimed that he played
Read more

Cheating in Chess

Image
In the 1561, Ruy Lopez de Segura (c. 1540- c. 1580), in his treatise on chess, advised his chess students to “place your opponent with the sun in his eyes if you play by day, and with the candle at his right side if you play at night.” In 1851, at the first international chess tournament held in London, Adolf Anderssen (1818-1879) of Germany and Jozsef Szen (1805-1857) of Hungary agreed that if either player took 1 st  place, he would pay 1/3 of his prize money to the other person.  Anderssen easily won his game from Szen in round 2.  Szen took 5 th  place.  This may not have been considered unethical.  First place was 183 British pounds and a silver cup. In January 1880, at the 5 th  American Chess Congress in New York, Preston Ware (1821-1890), a wealthy banker of Boston, testified to the tournament committee that his last-round opponent, James Grundy (1855-1919) of England, offered him $20 if he agreed to play for a draw in their game that had been adjourned.  A draw would give Grun
Read more