2001 Cramer Awards Announced
Posted 7 March 2002
Don Schultz
Chairman, Cramer Awards Committee

Sadly, last year Chess-in-the-Schools discontinued using income from the Cramer quarter-million Dollar bequest to the American Chess Foundation. As a result, the full announcement of 2001 Cramer Awards was delayed. The exception to this was the 2001 Chess Journalist of the Year award won by Hanon Russell. Hanon was the first journalist to win the Cramer Journalist of the Year award by a voting of all journalists belonging to the Chess Journalists of America. He also was the first Cramer Chess Journalist of the Year winner for journalism on the Internet, his Internet website, Chess Café, continues to set the standard of excellence for chess Internet websites.

Now, on behalf of the Cramer Awards committee, I am happy to announce the other three 2001 Awards for Excellence in Chess Journalism:

Best Chess Column
Harold Dondis, Boston Globe

Harold Dondis' Chess column has been appearing in the Boston Globe weekly since 1964!! Recently, to save space the Globe discontinued it. There was such an uproar over this that the Globe not only brought it back but Harold's chess column now appears two times a week! When informed of the award, Harold asked that proper recognition be given to IM John Curdo and GM Patrick Wolf who do the game analysis and commentary for his column.

Best State Publication
Illinois Chess Bulletin

The Illinois Chess Bulletin, published six times a year, is the official publication of the of the Illinois Chess Association. It has won numerous Chess Journalist of America Awards and has won the Cramer Award for Best State Publication in 1994 and 1999. During 2001 three different editors shared the honor of serving as editor for this fine publication: Roy Frye, Josh Flores and Bill Brock.

Best Book
Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces
by Igor Stohl (318 pages, $24.95)

Igor Stohl is a grandmaster from Slovakia and was a runner-up in the 1982 World Junior. This book is a collection of 50 grandmaster games, covering the period from Gelfand-Dreev, Tilburg 1993 to Anand-Khalifman, FIDE World Cup, Shenyang 2000. In a Chess Café review by Stephen Ham, the book is described as "Big and Beautiful." Ham goes on to describe both the quantity and quality of Stohl's work as being "Great."

Previous winners for these categories are:

Chess Journalist of the Year

• 1994 - IM John Donaldson
• 1995 - Shelby Lyman
• 1996 - Burt Hochberg
• 1997 - Jerry Hanken
• 1998 - GM Yasser Seirawan
• 1999 - Mike Franett
• 2000 - GM Larry Evans
• 2001 - Hanon Russell

Best Book

• 1996 - The Bobby Fischer I Knew by GM Arnold Denker and Larry Parr
• 1998 - Napier The Forgotten Chess Master by John Hilbert
     Alekhine's Chess Games by Leonard Skinner and Robert Verhoeven
• 1999 - Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy by John Watson
• 2000 - Soviet Chess 1917-1971 (Historical) by GM Andy Soltis
     The Road to Chess Improvement (Instructional) by GM Alex Yermolinsky
     Chessdon (Memoirs) by Don Schultz
• 2001 - Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces by Igor Stohl

Best Chess Column

• 1998 - David Sands (Washington Times)
• 1999 - GM Lubosh Kavalak (Washington Post)
• 2000 - GM Robert Byrne (NY Times) and GM Michael Rohde (Chess Life)
• 2001 - Harold Dondis (Boston Globe)

Best State Magazine

• 1994 - Illinois Chess Bulletin (Robert Renault) and Atlantic Chess (David Burris)
• 1995 - floridaCHESS (Don Schultz)
• 1996 - floridaCHESS (Don Schultz)
• 1997 - Chess Horizons (Joe Sparks)
• 1998 - Texas Knights (Selby Anderson)
• 1999 - Illinois Chess Bulletin (Josh Flores)
• 2000 - Chess Horizons (Peter Sherwood)
• 2001 - Illinois Chess Bulletin
     Mar-Apr 2000 thru Nov-Dec 2000: Roy Frye
     Jan-Feb 2001: Josh Flores
     Mar-Apr 2001 thru May-Jun 2001: Bill Brock