Reinhard Scharnagl passed away

[Paloma]

Sadly German 10x8 chess programmer (SMIRF) Reinhard Scharnagl passed away.

His Son wrote here: http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkafor ... ?tid=31031

My Condolence to his Family.

[Graham Banks]

Sad news indeed.

[hgm]

That is very sad news. Reinhard was one of the driving forces behind 10x8 Chess, and he will be sorely missed in that area.

I wish his family all the best.

[Evert]

Oh, wow.

I can't claim to have known the man, but I'm aware of his work. It's always a little disconcerting when someone like that dies. It drives home the point that life is finite, and now is the best time to do things you want to do.

The real shocker, to me, is that this apparently isn't all that recent either (over six months ago, it seems)...

[Gerd Isenberg]

Sorry to hear that.

On August 01, 2015 he posted on his google+ site that he survived three weeks of chemotherapy and radiation fighting cerebral tumor, and was in good mood to win the fight.

[Greg Strong]

Wow. I'm pretty stunned. Although I hadn't communicated with him in recent years, we were in frequent contact once. In the early days of ChessV, he was one of the only other active programmers of a variant engine. We were always testing our new versions against the other's.

In addition to 10x8, he was also a big advocate of Chess960, even publishing a book on the subject (sadly, only available in German.) He will be missed. May he rest in peace.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi there,

in the time we started with Arena FRC support in cooperation with DGT (in the beginning of FRC, we are very fast with Arena "FRC support" and do here a lot in cooparation with 4-5 chess programmers, Betsy programmer and much others for one example) Reinhard helps a lot and was the FRC supporter number 1.

With other words:
Reinhard was one of the first persons in computer chess, working with a lot of engergy on FRC (Fischer-Random-Schach (FRC / Chess960).

He wrote a very nice book about it and I sent him much information to his book (Die revolutionäre Zukunft des Schachspiels, inkl. Computerschach). I very proud about his work because all what he do was very important for FRC. It was at this time a bigger topic in my older Arena Support Forum and many people around the World search the discussion about it, in most of times with Reinhard.

I learn a lot from Reinhard in question to ... "press one's point".
Often he was very hard in discussion because all what he wrote in German fora make sense. Criticism by Reinhard was all the time justified. I admired Reinhard for his manner of discussions and energy.

One of the strongest people for computer chess in questions ... I try to make that what we have stronger and I am working on it a longer time. And Reinhard working hard on it because to give the others ... at this time ... the Information ... hey, try FRC and you will have a lot of fun ... with his work also Arena GUI are more and more popular. Many copycat / freeloader at this time ... people used his work and say .. the ideas comes from myself. In reality ... most of important additional ideas comes from Reinhard. Reinhard try to hold the Name FRC (more right as Chess960 ... others give that bad name).

I am heavy-hearted!
THANKS Reinhard for all what you do for us!!!

Best
Frank

[Mincho Georgiev]

I saw his son's post on open-chess, really sad. I still to this day read from time to time the old chess archives saved on my phone and occasionally read posts from Don and Reinhard.
Thoughts and prayers to his family!

[Andres Valverde]

My condolences to his family

[Matthias Gemuh]

Sadly German 10x8 chess programmer (SMIRF) Reinhard Scharnagl passed away.

His Son wrote here: http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkafor ... ?tid=31031

My Condolence to his Family.

Again the chess community loses a member through cancer.
People who have free access to bitter apricot seeds, should eat X seeds per day regularly (for prevention or cure).

Formula: X = "body weight in kg" divided by ten
An 80-kg guy may eat 8 seeds per day.

As for Reinhard, may his soul R. I. P.