Recent news, 13 August 2014

Hermann Weißauer dead at 93

On the weekend of 2nd and 3rd August, the German composer Hermann Weißauer has died. The sad news was confirmed by Franz Pachl. Dr. Weißauer was Honorary Master for Chess Composition. Born on 4 October 1920, he invented the Weißauer-Bahnung in 1978, which is described as follows in Milan's encyclopedia:

Black clears a line for White after a capture on this very line

The thematic problem can be seen at the de-Wikipedia link given above.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov re-elected as FIDE president

The disputed ex-politician Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was re-elected as president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE). His opponent, World Chess Champion 1985-2000 (undisputed until 1993) Garry Kasparov, received 61 of 174 votes, Ilyumzhinov received 110 of 174 votes. I have no information regarding the three missing votes.

One interesting fact: Ilyumzhinov was a politician first, friend of the Russian government... and then became FIDE president. Kasparov became a politician only after retiring from chess and - after being a political activist, opponent of the Russian government... also wants to become FIDE president.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was president of the Republic of Kalmykia, a Russian republic, from 1993 to 2010. Garry Kasparov dominated the chess world from the late 1980s to 2004 when he retired. Kasparov held the biggest chess rating of all time, an Elo of 2851, in 1999 and 2000. The record was only recently surpassed by the current World Champion, Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen, who set a record Elo 2882 in May 2014. With the Elo inflation, however, a match between Kasparov in his best times against Carlsen today would hold a great suspense...

First Israel Open Solving Championship

The Israel Open Solving Championship was held on 20 July 2014 in the Leyada. The winner was Piotr Murdzia (Poland) while the Israel Championship was won by Ofer Friedland. More information can be found on the official website.

Judit Polgar to retire from competitive chess

While preparing this news article, the message has reached us that Judit Polgár, the possibly strongest chessplaying woman in the world (she never played a woman world championship since she doesn't want to participate in pure woman tourneys), has announced to retire from competitive chess. An article on Chessbase brings further details. Polgár's sister Susan is also a rare chess composer.

Current Woman World Chess Champion is Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan who first gained the title at 16 years old.