MR. Jan-Olav Berglund have been an organizer/arbiter at many international tournaments, matches, invitationals and Swisses, and of course of national tournaments at all levels as well as coach at various international tournaments for juniors and for seniors, male and female, teams and individuals.
He was also in the chess mail order business, like Gary Bekker, for about 20 years.
He was a major dealer in Northern Europe and was also represented with a booth at the Olympics in Thessaloniki, Greece both times, Dubai and Novi Sad.
He had written/edited about 25 books published on his then chess book company and a couple published elsewhere.
In the mid-90's he was the headmaster of a state-run chess college for national and international students in Sweden.
Unfortunately, the Swedish economy when down then and about 360 sports schools were reduced to 36.
The two government chess colleges (The Chess Federation run one of them, he and former world champion Anatoly Karpov run the other one) had to shut down and have not reopened since.
He is continuing being in touch with some of his students by email since then. He still have in his possession a 16,000 volume chess library where the President of Asian Chess Federation is interested to have.
Some top players of Palau still don't believe that Mr. Berglund exists. For them, to see is to believe and seeing Mr. Berglund to come to Palau is the ultimate reason for them to believe.
The Chairman of Palau Chess Federation, Francis 'Sno' Temaugil was given a copy of all emails of Mr. Berglund (from Sept. 27, 2007-December 2008) by its Secretary/Treasurer Roberto Hernandez.
Another copy was given to Gene Pastrana and he was requested to lend it to other non-believers for referral.
Mr. Berglund also suggested to have a yearly election of officials of Palau Chess Federation.
Philippine Ambassador to Palau Ramoncito Marino, the top chess supporter in Palau, has cancelled the 3rd Ambassador Marino Cup due to tight budget caused by the world economic crisis.
In his conversation with Hernandez on Sunday evening and Monday morning, he said PCF should now concentrate in the Oceania Zonal Tournament 2009 (The first international step to qualify for the World Chess Cup) to be held in Brisbane on the Australian Gold Coast on June 20-28, 2009.
The Ambassador promised to get a discount for players' airfare from Philippine Airlines.
The Australian Gary Bekker, president of Oceania Zone, has promised that one male and one female players from Palau will get full board and lodging and free entry to the Zonal.
The players need to should their own air tickets and visas, which cost $75.00 and will take one month to process as the embassy here will forward it to Pohnpei and the applicants need to shoulder also the payment of its return.
Source: Chessmate by Roberto Hernandez
Tia Belau Newspaper
Pages 13 & 15
Volume 18
Issue 02
January 12-18, 2009
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