HISTORY OF CORRESPONDENCE CHESS IN INDONESIA

Dutch East Indies Period

The history of correspondence chess in Indonesia had already started when Indonesia was still known by the name “the Dutch East Indies”. Eduard Douwes Dekker^[1], better known by the name Multatuli^[2], was an author of satirical novel entitled Max Havelaar (1860). He lived in Indonesia, between 1839 - 1859 and became a government employee (resident) in Natal (North Sumatra), Manado, Ambon, Lebak (Banten). He was also a correspondence chess player. There were eight games correspondence chess registered that lasted from 1873 until 1886^[3]. 

But if Multatuli playing his correspondence chess game after he returned to the European continent, there was another correspondence chess player, namely Albert Jan Antonie Prange^[4]. There was only few information about him. He was born in 1863 in Batavia (Jakarta) and died in 1916 in Surabaya. There were records of two correspondence chess games which he played in 1886, both were estimated played from the land of Indonesia.

After independence, the Indonesian name was started to appear and immerse in the world of correspondence chess and in conjunction with the International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) it was recorded that Indonesia became a member of the federation for several time, however due to ICCF inactivity, Indonesian withdrew its membership.

1960s Period

Lim Hong Gie, also known as Lugito Hayadi, was one of the participants of the fourth ICCF World Championship Final, which lasted from 1962 to 1965 and  attended by 13 players. The championship was won by Vladimir Zagorovsky (USSR) who became the fourth ICCF World Champion. Gie occupied the tenth position with four wins, two draws and six losses with the final score of five^[5].

For his participation in the ICCF World Championship Final in 1965, ICCF gave the title of International Master (IM) to him, a first title from ICCF, which held by Indonesian correspondence chess player.

2000 Period

In this period Kudus Tjiptadi, who held the first of Indonesian ICCF ID, 873001, participated in the first Afro-Asian Championship (email) in 1998-99 and in the second in 1999-2000. He participated the championship until the final round. Bambang, Buhihardja (873002), who participated in the

Email Olympiad in 2000 (later substituted by Hichem, Karim)^[6], and Tong Soen, Huey (873007) reached the semifinals round in the World Championship in 2003^[7].

In 2004, the ICCF Congress in Mumbai, India, Indonesia and Tunisia were accepted as members ICCF where Huey Tong Soen and Ali Sintoro (873008) were the official delegations from Indonesia for ICCF. In 2009,  at a congress ICCF in Leeds, Indonesia's membership in ICCF was suspended.

PERCAKI Period

The new era of correspondence chess in Indonesia was started when the Indonesian correspondence chess players was facilitated by Austin Lockwood (ICCF Service Director). Together with the leaders of the federation correspondence chess in several countries, Austin Lockwood organized historical friendly games between Indonesia and Scotland, Peru, Panama, Venezuela and Wales as the first batch, also between the USA, Finland and England on the second batch which began in December 2016.

In February 2017, Indonesian Correspondence Chess Association or Persatuan Catur Korespondensi Indonesia (PERCAKI) was officially established; an association to control, administer and foster correspondence chess throughout Indonesia, and for the first time the association is organizing the First Indonesia National Tournament on February 2017 which is participated by six Indonesian players.