Joop van Oosterom

Joop van Oosterom
Full name	Joop van Oosterom
Country	Netherlands
Born	(1937-12-12) December 12, 1937 Hilversum, Netherlands
World Champion	World Correspondence Chess Champion, 2005 and 2008

Joop van Oosterom (born 12 December 1937, Hilversum) is a Dutch billionaire, chess and billiards sponsor, and twice correspondence chess world champion. He made his money with the Volmac Software Group.^[1]

From 1992 to 2011 he staged the annual Melody Amber chess tournament in Monaco, where world-class Grandmasters played rapid and blindfold games. It is named after his first daughter Melody Amber. His other daughter was the eponym to the Crystal Kelly Cup, an invitational tournament for three-cushion carom billiards, which has been held between 1994 and 2011 mostly in Monte Carlo and Nice.^[2]

Van Oosterom was a strong correspondence chess player, but suffered a severe stroke some years ago. Nevertheless, he concluded the world correspondence chess championship successfully and became the 18th World Champion in Correspondence Chess in 2005. This achievement, however, has been criticized, as at the time of the championship van Oosterom had hired the strong grandmaster Jeroen Piket as his personal secretary. Earlier, van Oosterom had had two Dutch International Masters on his payroll whose job was to analyse his correspondence games. Chess author Tim Krabbé wrote: "The Turk was operated by William Schlumberger, Mephisto was operated by Isidore Gunsberg, Ajeeb was operated by Harry Pillsbury and Joop van Oosterom is operated by Jeroen Piket."^[3] Van Oosterom also won the 21st World Championship Final in Correspondence Chess in 2008.

Notes

Preceded by Ivar Bern	World Correspondence Chess Champion 2003–2004	Succeeded by Christophe Léotard
Preceded by Pertti Lehikoinen	World Correspondence Chess Champion 2008-2010	Succeeded by Aleksandr Surenovich Dronov