Chess Oscar was an international award given annually to the best

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

player. The winner was selected by votes that were cast by chess journalists from across the world. The traditional voting procedure was to request hundreds of chess journalists from many countries to submit a list of the ten best players of the year. The voters were journalists who knew the game and followed it closely, and so the honor was highly prized. The award itself took the form of a bronze statuette representing a man in a boat. The prize was created and awarded in 1967 by Spanish journalist Jorge Puig, and the (AIPE). The awards were given from 1967 until 1988. Then, after a pause, they resumed in 1995, and were then organized by the Russian chess magazine ''64'' until 2014. The Oscar for the best women chess player of the year was established in 1982.

Statuette

The statuette's final form, a man in a boat, was carved by the sculptor Alexander Smirnov. It represented a figure known as "The Fascinated Wanderer", which refers to a short story written in 1873 by 19th-century Russian author

Nikolai Leskov Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov (; – ) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, and held ...

. In this story, the title character, Ivan Flyagin, is a horse trainer and a brute of a man. From his birth his mother has promised that Ivan's life would be devoted to the church. Ivan spends many years avoiding this fate, but eventually gives in and becomes a monk, not for spiritual reasons, but due to a poverty of opportunity. The Chess Oscar statuette originally took the form of "The Lady of the Umbrella", a figure based on a statue in

Parc de la Ciutadella The (; "Citadel Park") is a park on the northeastern edge of Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. For decades following its creation in the mid-19th century, this park was the city's only green space. The 31-hectare (77 acres) grounds inc ...

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

, Spain.

Winners

Women

By person

By nation

Notes

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

Los Oscar del ajedrez español
winners of the Spanish categories of the award and photos

Oscar Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People and fictional and mythical characters * Oscar (given name), including lists of people and fictional characters named Oscar, Óscar or Oskar * Oscar (footballer, born 1954), Brazilian footballer ...

1967 in chess 1995 in chess Awards established in 1967