Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam

Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam

Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam (born January 11, 1957) is a Dutch chess writer, commentator and organizer. He is the editor-in-chief of New In Chess, an international chess magazine with readers in 116 countries. Ten Geuzendam graduated from Groningen University, where he studied English Language and Literature and General Literature.

He joined New In Chess in 1985 and ever since the late 1980s he’s been covering top-level chess, reporting from all over the world. Over the years he has interviewed countless grandmasters and other chess personalities. A selection of those interviews appeared in his books Finding Bobby Fischer (1994, second edition 2015) and The Day Kasparov Quit (2006). His book Linares! Linares!, A Journey into the Heart of Chess (2001, first published as Het Geheime Wonder in Dutch in 2000), is a romantic account full of stories (but no games) of the legendary chess tournaments in Linares, Spain.

Furthermore, he edited a number of tournament books including The Second SWIFT International Chess Tournament, Brussels 1987, The 11th Interpolis Chess Tournament, Tilburg 1987, The 12th Interpolis Chess Tournament, Tilburg 1988, SKA Mephisto Turnier 1991 (in German), Waarom schaakt u eigenlijk? (in Dutch, 1996 VSB tournament, Amsterdam), Fontys Schaaktoernooi Tilburg 1996 (in Dutch), Donner Memorial Amsterdam 1997 (in Dutch) and Fontys Schaaktoernooi Tilburg 1997 (in Dutch).

Ever since his meeting with American legend Bobby Fischer in Sveti Stefan in 1992, Ten Geuzendam kept a special interest in the 11th Chess World Champion. Following the death of Fischer in 2008, he travelled to Iceland to speak to the people who had been close to Fischer while he lived there. The result was a 22-page article in New In Chess 2008/2. Another extensive article on Fischer appeared in New In Chess 2015/3, in which Ten Geuzendam argued that ‘(only) by accepting (Fischer’s mental) illness as a fact can we forgive his virulent anti-Semitism, his raving paranoia and other delusions, and embrace the chess genius, one of the greatest and most inspiring champions our game has ever seen.’

Besides his work for New In Chess he has written a lot about chess for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad and for the Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland, where he had a chess column from 1994 till 2002. A selection of his columns was published as Schaaklezen (in Dutch) in 2000. From 2007 to 2013 he was one of the editors (together with Allard Hoogland and Rob van Vuure) of the Dutch chess literary magazine Matten.

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