Nominations received for
Gallery of Distinguished Chess Journalists (2007)

Cramer Award Category
Category 2: Gallery of Distinguished Chess Journalists
Awarded to individuals from the past or present who have demonstrated a lifetime of achievement in chess journalism. Nominators: supply supporting evidence.

Cramer Award winners will receive the traditional marble obelisk and a CJA certificate.

For a full list of CJA Awards categories see: 2007 Chess Journalists of America / Cramer Journalism Awards.

Ballots for voting by CJA members will be distributed in the June 2007 issue of The Chess Journalist.
You may also email your vote to the chief judge. Only individuals listed in the current Membership List may vote.
No specific deadline is given, but it is recommended that your vote be received by August 1 to insure it is counted.
Note that this award is not for chess accomplishments but for chess journalism.

Following are the statements provided by the nominators.

Note that the Award is for their entire career.

Horace Ransom Bigelow

Horace Ransom Bigelow

Born March 6, 1898 (St. Paul, Minnesota) ; Died April 18, 1980 (Port Washington, NY)

His obituary appears in the New York Times: April 20, 1980, p.44

Selections from Albrecht Buschke's "Library of a Great Chess Journalist" in the Winter, 1980-81 (Volume 9 Number 2) issue of The Chess Journalist (pp. 14-15):

"He was a Rhodes Scholar, attending Oxford University (Baillol College) in England and played in a number of intercollegiate and open events, e.g., Bromley 1920 and Malvern 1921.

As librarian of the New York Athletic Club, he edited the chess column in its house organ, the Winged Foot, having taken over from Albert B. Hodges, former U.S. chess champion who died in 1944.

For the first American edition of Lasker's Manual of Chess he compiled a very comprehensive index, which, strangely, in later editions was either suppressed or plagiarized without mentioning his name.

This collaboration with Lasker earned him a very warm handwritten dedication by the famous author reading: 'To one who co-operated with me on this book and who continued the tradition of my Evening Post column in brilliant style. To Horace Ransom Bigelow with kindest regards. Emanuel Lasker. New York, 19th Sept., 1928.'

No higher praise from a competent authority can be imagined in connection with the famous chess column Bigelow conducted for decades in the New York Post, and this column, indeed, must be considered his greatest achievement. It attracted readers, solvers and correspondents not only from New York and its neighborhood, but from elsewhere in the United States and even from abroad. It was a chess column in the best sense of the word, incorporating the practical game as well as original problems, book reviews and news from all over the world. It was a chess column in the noble tradition of the Morphy period and contemporaries Bettman, Northrup, Chevalier, Helms and Ranneforth in Germany. In fact with both his colleagues George P. Northrup and Herman Helms he was on friendly foot.

Bigelow's column arranged not only chess problem "ladder" contest, but problem solving tournaments, and the problem tournaments attracted the greatest names of the contemporary problem world. Bigelow himself was an authority on the chess problem and chess endings and wrote for the American Chess Bulletin."

Yasser Seirawan

Yasser Seirawan

Chess editor of Inside Chess Magazine (c.1987-1999)

Chess Columnist at Chess Café.com (2001-2007)

On-line chess analyst at ChessBase.com

Books:

• Play Winning Chess
• Winning Chess Tactics (with Silman)
• Winning Chess Strategies
• Winning Chess Brilliancies
• Competitive Chess for Kids
• Winning Chess Combinations
• Winning Chess Endings
• Winning Chess Openings
• Alekhine in the Americas (with Donaldson)
• Alekhine in Europe and Asia (with Minev, Donaldson)
• Take My Rooks (with Minev, Jonathan Berry)
• Caro-Kann
• No Regrets, Fischer-Spassky, 1992

See Wikipedia entry.

Alex Dunne

Alex Dunne

The Check is in the Mail Chess Life Column (At least since 1982)

Book Reviews, Editor to ezine: ICCF Amici (2004-2005)

USCF Director of Correspondence Chess

Books:

• Modern Postal Masterpieces
• Complete Guide to Correspondence Chess
• 2010 Chess Oddities
• The LDL Sicilian
• How to Become a Candidate Master
• How to Be a Class A Player
• Great Chess Books of the 20th Century in English
• Center Counter Uprising (Main Line Mieses)