Guess when he last lost a white game!

by ChessBase
1/19/2004 – Tunc Hamarat has become the 16th International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) World Champion. In the finals he scored a remarkable 11/15, but more astonishing is a different record: in correspondence chess Hamarat has not lost a single white game in the last – 40 years! Here's a full report and games.

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Tunc Hamarat new Correspondence Chess World Champion

During the 16th ICCF World Championship Tunc Hamarat had amassed an unassailable 11 out of 15 points with one game remaining. He was really deadly on the black side of the Sicilian Sveshnikov, beating former CC World Champion Horst Rittner of Germany and Greek IM Spyros Kofidis with it!

His nearest challengers were Dutch CC-GM Rudolf Maliankay and German CC-GM Achim Soltau, both of whom finished with 10/16 points and are well placed to win the silver and bronze medals. However, Russian Igor Samarin remains with an outside chance to pip them for a medal with his 8.5/14 with 2 games remaining.

Tunc Hamarat was born on 1.12.1946 in Istanbul and lived in Turkey until 1972. In that year he moved to Austria in order to do a degree in physics at the Technical University of Vienna. Since then he has lived in Austria and for the last ten years been an Austrian citizen.

In over-the-board chess Hamarat was in the finals of the Turkish championships three times. In Vienna he played in the top league. But his main interest was correspondence chess, "because I am a perfectionist". In 1997 he won the title of Grandmaster of Correspondence Chess. Astonishingly he has not lost a correspondence game with the white pieces in the last – 40 years!

Junior Tay

 


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