Eva Moser (July 26, 1982 - March 31, 2019) has died at 36

by André Schulz
4/3/2019 – Last weekend the Austrian chess player Eva Moser died at the age of 36. She was the best female Austrian chess player of all time and in 2006 even won the open Austrian National Championship. In 2015 she stopped playing tournament chess, presumably due to her battle with Leukaemia. | Photos: ChessBase

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Austria's best female chess player

Eva Moser, born on July 26, 1982 in Tamsweg, in the Austrian state of Salzburg. She started to play chess in school and her great talent became quickly apparent. When she was eleven years old she played her first international tournaments, taking part in the European Junior Championship 1993 and the World Junior Championship 1993. She won the Austrian Junior Championship eight times, and in 1998 she came second at the European Junior Championship U16 and fifth at the World Junior Championship U16. In 1999 she first played in the Austrian national team (men and women) to take part in the Mitropa Cup. 

One year later, at the Chess Olympiad 2000 in Istanbul, when she was 18 years old, Moser played on the Austrian women's national team for the first time.

In 2003, she gained the Women Grandmaster (WGM) title, the first Austrian who received this distinction. In 2004, she became an International Master and in the same year she played on board one for Austria in the open section of the Chess Olympiad in Calvia. In 2008, 2010, and 2014 she played for the Austrian women's team at the Chess Olympiads, and at the Olympiad in Dresden 2008 she had the outstanding result of 8½/10. Between 2003 and 2013 Eva Moser played in five European Women's Team Championships for Austria.

Eva Moser, left, at the Chess Olympiad in Dresden 2008

At the Austrian Championship 2006 (Open) she finished ahead of all her male rivals and became Austrian Champion. In the same year she also won the Austrian Team Championship with her club Styria Graz. In 2010 and 2011 Eva Moser also became Austrian Women's Champion.

Eva Moser did not only play in the Austrian League. From 2006 to 2008 she played for the SC Kreuzberg in the Bundesliga, Germany's Premier League, and from 2000 to 2005 to 2015 she also played in Germany's Women's Premier League, from 2000 to 2005 for the Dresdner SC and from 2006 to 2015 for the OSG Baden-Baden, winning the league with her teams in 2002, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2015. In 2012, with her peak rating of 2471, Moser was number 25 on the women's world ranking list.

In 2009, after finishing her studies with a BA in Business Studies, she also worked as a journalist, and for many years regularly wrote articles for the Austrian chess magazine Schach-Aktiv.

One of her biggest successes in an individual tournament was her victory at the Gutmann Memorial 2013 in Augsburg. Eva Moser won the ten-player-round-robin with 7½/9, had an Elo performance of almost 2700, made a GM norm and finished ahead of several grandmasters. Particularly curious was her game against Petar Arnaudov where at one point no less than five queens were on the board!

 

Eva Moser recorded a number of DVDs for ChessBase: about the King's Gambit, the Sicilian Alapin (1e4 c5 2.c3) and together with Thomas Luther, about the Grünfeld. Her last DVD 1.d4 c5 - Phantasie statt Theorie! (1.d4 c5! - Imagination instead of Theory!) was particularly successful.

Eva Moser at the ChessBase studio in Hamburg

During her visits to Hamburg and on many other occasions we got to know Eva as an extremely charming and friendly person and as a witty conversation partner.

In 2015, she suddenly withdrew from tournament chess. She played her last official game in February 2015 in the Austrian League. However, she was still active on the playchess server, contacted us sometimes, and in 2017 started her chess training again.

Eva Moser died last Sunday, March 31, 2019, of leukaemia at the age of 36. We lost a good friend.

Translation from German: Johannes Fischer

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André Schulz started working for ChessBase in 1991 and is an editor of ChessBase News.