Chess Oscar
Chess Oscar is an international award given annually to the best chess player. The winner is selected by votes that are cast by chess journalists from across the world. The traditional voting procedure is to request hundreds of chess journalists from many countries to submit a list of the ten best players of the year. The voters are journalists who know the game and follow it closely, and so the honor is highly prized. The award itself currently takes the form of a bronze statuette representing a man in a boat.[1] The prize was created and awarded in 1967 by Spanish journalist Jorge Puig, and the International Association of Chess Press (AIP). The awards were given from 1967 until 1988. Then, after a pause, they resumed in 1995, and have since been organized by the Russian chess magazine 64.[2][3]
Statuette
The statuette's current form, a man in a boat, was carved by the sculptor Alexander Smirnov. It represents a figure known as "The Fascinated Wanderer", which refers to a short story written in 1873 by 19th-century Russian author Nikolai Leskov. 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.[4][5]
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 in Barcelona, Spain.[6][7][8]
Winners
By person
-
Player Country Wins Garry Kasparov 
Soviet Union, later 
Russia11 Anatoly Karpov Soviet Union9 Viswanathan Anand 
India6 Magnus Carlsen 
Norway5 Bobby Fischer 
United States3 Boris Spassky Soviet Union2 Vladimir Kramnik Russia2 Bent Larsen 
Denmark1 Viktor Korchnoi 
Switzerland1 Veselin Topalov 
Bulgaria1
By nation
-
Country Wins Soviet Union17 Russia7 India6 Norway5 United States3 Bulgaria1 Denmark1 Switzerland1
References
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- ↑ Hill, Tata McGraw. General Knowledge Digest 2010. Tata McGraw Hill Education Private Limited. 2010
- ↑ Leskov, Nikolai. The Enchanted Wanderer: Selected Tales, Modern Library Classics, 2003. ISBN 0-8129-6696-1
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- ↑ Kasparov wins 2002 Chess Oscar, ChessBase News, 9-May-2003
- ↑ Anand wins Chess Oscar for third time, rediff.com, 6-May-2004
- ↑ Anand wins third Chess Oscar, ChessBase News, 8-May-2004
- ↑ Chess Oscar 2005 for Veselin Topalov, ChessBase News, 30-April-2006
- ↑ Chess Oscar 2006, The Week in Chess 654, 21-May-2007
- ↑ Anand Wins Chess Oscars for 2007, ChessBase News, 8-May-2008
- ↑ “Oscar” prize to be brought to Baku for the first time!, APA News, 21 Apr 2009, access date 2009-04-22.
- ↑ And the 2009 Oscar goes to ... Magnus Carlsen!, Chessvibes November 17, 2010.
- ↑ Carlsen beats Anand to 2010 Chess Oscar, Why Chess, 29 Jul 2011.
- ↑ Oscar 2011 - Magnus Carlsen, ChessPro, 2 Nov 2012.
- ↑ Oscar 2012 - Magnus Carlsen, Chess-news-ru, 12 Jun 2013.
- ↑ Oscar 2013 - Magnus Carlsen, Natalia Pogonina on Twitter, 29 Nov 2014.
