Author: Vincent Diepeveen
Date: 08:19:48 12/04/02
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On December 04, 2002 at 10:48:16, Timothy J. Frohlick wrote: >Vincent, > >My condolences to Jan and his family. How old was he? > >TJF We can calculate it a little. He was around 18 i guess when he survived the nazi concentration camps. Add to that 58 years and you'll get to around 76. Jan started computerchess in the 70s already. Knowing i am born in 73, i am very happy that Jan never hesitated to tell all the things how computerchess in europe started. A big year was 1981 for Jan Louwman. He organized a big computerchess event here in Utrecht. Thousands of spectators watched. Not soon after that world championships computerchess started. Jan attended all of them, with exception of Jakarta which he boycotted because of the political problems there. Even despite his bad health he even was short at the 2002 world championships in maastricht. His company compuchess never made much profit. He was such a big computerchess fan that after talking enthusiastically with his customers, he gave them all discounts. Jan invested a lot in computers himself too. Always the latest hardware. In the 80s he was a major help for commercial programmers. Especially playing games for them. In those years the dedicated chesscomputers, which dominated of course computerchess with regards to sales, had no auto232 player nor other protocols to automatically test. So Jan already from back in the 70s was testing programs by hand. In his glory days he operated at 40 in 2 levels computers by hand about 5 games at the same time (10 dedicated boardcomputers at the same time). For insiders it is amazing that Jan managed to keep alive that long. His very strong will to not die must have kept him alive for years. Swallowing 11 to 13 medicines a day (weak heart, cancer problems, and another load of problems) is not very good for a body of a person. So where he was still very alive a week ago (but deteriorating a lot in this sense that he could not leave his bed anymore) in his mind, when i visited him, we must take into acount that the last 25 years or so, Jan has lived with immense pains. It doesn't take away that a great man with incredible energy has deceased. I expect to see more chessprogrammers at his funeral than we see on average at a world championship. Vaste majority of commercial chess programs in europe have profitted from Jan's testing. In my case, besides testing thousands of games (40 in 2) mostly at many of his 20-30 computers, Jan has helped me incredible also with contracts and other things. A great man has gone. I will never forget him. A small list of programmers Jan has somehow helped, operated for, tested for or helped in some other way (mentionning programs make no sense because without exception all programmers have produced more than 1 program which get/got sold under different names): - Chrilly Donninger - Ed Schroder - Frans Morsch - Richard Lang - Christophe Theron - Bart Weststrate - Peter McKenzie - Gian Carlo Pascutto - James Robertson - Vincent Diepeveen And endlessly others which i must have forgotten. This is just the list i remember that quickly from head. Especially the commercial programmers among them have worked a lot together with Jan. A crown onto Jan's effort was most likely the world title that Rebel won in Madrid around 1991/1992. >On December 04, 2002 at 10:40:43, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: > >>Hello, >> >>Apologies to post it in this forum, but many here knew >>Jan Louwman. As one of the founders of commercial >>computerchess, with hundreds of friends all around the >>globe, it is clear to me that i should inform people >>here. >> >>Jan Louwman died this morning 4 december 2002 around 11.30 in >>his bed. For more information, don't hesitate to email me. >> >>Best regards, >>Vincent Diepeveen
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