Klaus Bischoff, Germany's first Internet Champion

Six players turned up at the ChessBase offices in Hamburg, six others, who had qualified in tournaments staged in the past weeks on the Playchess.com server, played out of their homes. The tournament was open only to German players.

The time controls were pure blitz, i.e. five minutes for all the moves of a game, with no increment per move. The event was a double round robin, with a total of 22 rounds. It lasted for five hours, from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., with just a few short pauses between the rounds.

Hickl, Graf, Bischoff, Pähtz, Hübner, Dautov: the German national team in the ChessBase office

The six in Hamburg were members of the German national team. All but one are male GMs, who were joined by our U18 women's world champion Elizabeth Pähtz.

Elli arrived in a sorry state, having had two wisdom teeth extracted a couple of days earlier. She begged us not to publish any pictures of her swollen face. Since she was in obvious and considerable pain during the games we comply with her wishes.

GMs Jörg Hickl, Alexander Graf and Klaus Bischoff in action

On the other side of the table: Robert Hübner, Rustem Dautov, Elisabeth Pähtz

The organisation was carried out entirely by Martin Fischer, the chief tournament director on the Playchess server.

Hübner vs Dautov, across the table

The decisive last game after six hours and 21 rounds: Hickl (left) loses to Bishoff (middle), who takes first place.

The winner of the tournament was Klaus Bishoff, who was hotly pursued during much of the event by Robert Rabiega, Rustam Dautov and Robert Hübner. It was gratifying to see that the top German GMs all did quite well, occupying most of the top places in the final table.

Games of the First German Internet Championship (zipped PGN)

Matthias Wüllenweber of ChessBase congratulates the winner