Ivar Bern (born 20 January 1967) is a Norwegian

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

player, most famous for being the seventeenth

World Correspondence Chess Champion The World Correspondence Chess Championship determines the World Champion in correspondence chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest the title. The official World Correspondence Chess Championship is managed by the International Corr ...

, 2002–2007. In chess he received the

FIDE title FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and ...

of International Master (IM) in 1990. In correspondence chess he earned the ICCF titles of International Master (IM) in 1994 and Grandmaster (GM) in 1996.

Biography

Bern joined the Norwegian correspondence chess federation in 1986 and won the Norwegian correspondence chess championship in 1988. Qualification to the World Championship started with scoring 10½/16 giving him a third-place finish in a World championship semifinal lasting between 1989 and 1995. This qualified him for a spot in the 3/4 final, or candidate tournament where Bern finished fourth, again scoring 10½/16, giving him one of the last spots in the World championship. The World Championship started in March 2002 and is as of January 2006 still ongoing, but on 7 January it became clear that none of the other contestants could overtake Bern any longer. Bern has completed all his games, scoring 10½/16 in this tournament as well. Two other players have the same number of points as he does, but Bern has better tiebreak scores. The slowness of conventional postcards in the seventeenth championship led to the winner of the ''eighteenth'' World Championship,

Joop van Oosterom Joop van Oosterom (12 December 1937 – 22 October 2016) was a Dutch billionaire, chess and billiards sponsor, and twice correspondence chess world champion. His fortune, made with the Volmac Software Group, was estimated by Dutch financial ma ...

being announced before Bern's victory in the seventeenth.] Another performance was the second place in the 7th World Cup Final (started in 1994 and finished in 2001). In over-the-board chess Bern has won the Open Norwegian Championships three times, in 1986, 1989 and 1990. His best results in the more prestigious closed Norwegian Chess Championship, Norwegian Championship are third-place finishes in 1989 and 1990. He gained the title of International Master in 1992. Bern plays for the Bergen Chess Club, and has participated on the teams which won the Norwegian Team Championships in 1994, 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2003. Bern is the chess columnist for

Bergens Tidende ''Bergens Tidende'' is Norway's fifth-largest newspaper, and the country's largest newspaper outside Oslo. ''Bergens Tidende'' is owned by the public company Schibsted ASA. Norwegian owners held a mere 42% of the shares in Schibsted at the end ...

. Apart from chess, Bern's occupation is as a psychologist in school administration. Bern has also been active as guitarist in the music rock groups The Swamp Babies and Syv.

References

External links

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Biography from the Norwegian Correspondence Chess Federation
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bern, Ivar 1967 births Living people Norwegian chess players Norwegian chess writers Norwegian columnists Correspondence chess grandmasters Chess International Masters World Correspondence Chess Champions