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International Correspondence Chess World Champion Jon Edwards

International Correspondence Chess World Champion Jon Edwards

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The United States has not just Hikaru Nakamura, the World Champion of Chess960 Fischer Random, Wesley So, the Chess.com Global Championship winner, but Jonathan Edwards, the Correspondence Chess World Champion. Jon Edwards lives in New Jersey, and is a well known Princeton University figure, as seen in his picture on the magazine cover above.

It seems that US chess is seeing a comeback which is quite astounding. Perhaps some of this is due to pandemic, streaming, a focus on Hikaru as a phenom.

But of course the individual strength of Wesley So and Jonathan Edwards is totally the cause of their victories here. 

According to his ICCF profile, World Correspondence Champion Jon Edwards is a Grandmaster of Correspondence Chess rated 2528 Elo. He earned Senior International Correspondence Chess Master title in 2003 and International Correspondence Chess Master in 2000. 

According to the New York Times, Jon Edwards plays in the style of the famous World Champion, Tigran Petrosian, who is not to be confused with the living internet meme famous, strong blitz player, Tigran L. Petrosian of "PIPI Pampers" fame. Jon has won many strong chess tournaments in such a style.

Before the computer age especially, correspondence chess was the only place where very deep ideas in openings were found. For example, the French defense was discovered in correspondence games in ancient days. 

In the computer age, it is very difficult for correspondence players to win, and becoming more and more difficult every year as the computer assistance become stronger, and the opening books become deeper and deeper. This makes the achievement of World Champion Grandmaster Jon Edwards even more amazing, as he achieved the victory with two wins against his very strong master opponents.

It goes without saying that the games of Grandmaster Jon Edwards, and the top level correspondence games, are of great value to the chess community. It is exciting to imagine what the future holds for chess, and these World Champion level games do show us some of the future.