Cor van Wijgerden

Cor van Wijgerden, 2010
Surname	Cornelis A. van Wijgerden
Association	Netherlands
Born	May 23, 1950 near Obbicht-Papenhoven
title	International champion (1978)
Current  Elo rating	2430 (August 2020)
Best Elo rating	2445 (January 1979)
Tab at the FIDE (English)

Cornelis "Cor" A. van Wijgerden (born May 23, 1950 near Obbicht-Papenhoven ) is a Dutch chess player , trainer and author.

Life

Cor van Wijgerden was born on his father's ship. He grew up in Rotterdam . At the age of 12 he learned to play chess from a friend and soon after joined a chess club. He proved to be a talented player, but was never able to qualify for the Dutch youth championships because he had strong competition in Rotterdam like Hans Böhm , who was about the same age . In 1969, however, he became Dutch team champions with his club Charlois / Europoort and won the open youth championship in Denmark. He completed a pedagogical training and then worked as a teacher in a primary school. In 1976 he qualified for the first time to participate in the Dutch individual championship, where he could not place in the front field with 4.5 points from 11 games. In the same year he was coach of John van der Wiel , who three years later became European youth champion. In 1978 van Wijgerden received the title of International Master . From 1979 to 1984 he published the Schaakjaarboek , worked on several tournament books and edited Max Euwe's final game textbooks . In April 1980 the Koninklijke Nederlandse Schaakbond appointed him national coach for youth, women and popular chess. Due to the increasing time pressure caused by this activity, he gave up his teaching profession in 1982. At the OHRA tournament in 1982 he missed a grandmaster norm by losing in the last round to Nigel Short . Since the mid-1980s, van Wijgerden has hardly been active as a player. He celebrated a great success as a coach at the 1988 Chess Olympiad , when the women's selection, which he greatly rejuvenated, was able to achieve a draw against the favored team from the Soviet Union.

Starting in 1985, he worked with Rob Brunia to develop teaching materials for children and young people, with whom he developed the so-called step method. It consists of exercise books, which are adapted to the respective skill level of the learner, together with accompanying material for chess teachers. Hundreds of thousands of students have been taught using this method, the materials of which have also been translated into other languages. In addition, van Wijgerden worked as a consultant for Tasc , a manufacturer of chess computers . From 1989 he also worked as a chess trainer at the Max Euwe Academie in Amsterdam. The players who were trained by Cor van Wijgerden as youngsters include the grandmasters Jeroen Piket , Friso Nijboer , Erwin l'Ami , Jan Smeets , Dimitri Reinderman and Daniël Stellwagen .

In December 2012 van Wijgerden was awarded the Max-Euwe-Ring for his services to Dutch chess .

Cor van Wijgerden is listed as inactive at FIDE, as he has not played an Elo rated game since 1984 .

literature

• Nieuwsbrief Max Euwe Centrum 81, 2012, pp. 4–20

Web links

Commons : Cor van Wijgerden  - Collection of images

• Replayable chess games by Cor van Wijgerden on 365Chess.com (English)