Some BDG Buddies

You get more that way the older you get. You’re looking for something, a missing key, say, and you open a drawer and there's an old box. You open the box, and look, there’s an envelope, and inside, why, some old pictures. And now the key is forgotten. Now it’s the pictures...

 

The pictures, like this one, about a quarter of a century old now, taken somewhere in Germany in the late 1980s. I once played correspondence chess with all these guys, except the old fellow with the white beard.

The gentleman with the tie is Walter Schneider, who did yeoman’s service in directing the finals of the first BDG World Correspondence Championship. Standing to Walter’s right is Gunter Müller, a master correspondence player and finalist in that tournament, finishing sixth in a field that began with 276 players. Seated in front of Gunter is Volker Drüke, editor of BDG-Revue, later Gambit-Revue, and beside Volker is the old master himself, E. J. Diemer.

Looking through the old pictures...