Joop van Oosterom

Joop van Oosterom
Full name	Joop van Oosterom
Country	Netherlands
Born	December 12, 1937 (1937-12-12) Hilversum, Netherlands
World Champion	World Correspondence Chess Champion, 2003–2004

Joop van Oosterom (born 12 December 1937, Hilversum) is a Dutch billionaire and chess enthusiast. For many years he has staged the annual Melody Amber tournaments in Monaco, where world-class Grandmasters play rapid and blindfold games.

Van Oosterom was a strong correspondence chess player, but suffered a severe stroke some years ago. Nevertheless, he concluded the world correspondence chess championship successfully and became the 18th World Champion in Correspondence Chess. This achievement, however, has been criticized, as at the time of the championship van Oosterom had hired grandmaster Jeroen Piket as his personal secretary. Earlier, van Oosterom had had two Dutch International Masters on his payroll whose job was to analyse his correspondence games. Chess author Tim Krabbé wrote: "The Turk was operated by William Schlumberger, Mephisto was operated by Isidore Gunsberg, Ajeeb was operated by Harry Pillsbury and Joop van Oosterom is operated by Jeroen Piket." He didn't stop at only one World Correspondence Chess Championship title, he also won the 21st World Championship Final in Correspondence Chess, being the actual Champion of ICCF.

Notes

Preceded by Ivar Bern	World Correspondence Chess Champion 2003–2004	Succeeded by Christophe Léotard
Preceded by Pertti Lehikoinen	World Correspondence Chess Champion 2008-2010	Succeeded by Aleksandr Surenovich Dronov

External links

• Oosterom vs Timmerman 1996 Multimedia annotated game
• Oosterom vs Timmerman 1999 Multimedia annotated game