In 1975, Jack Straley Battell, then the Correspondence Chess Director for the US Chess Federation, envisioned a new event for masters which would ultimately determine an "absolute" champion of correspondence chess, thus the "Absolute Correspondence Chess Championship" was born. Jack initially proposed to structure the first event in 1976 with Class level pairings. But after some discussion it was decided to make it an Invitational. The top rated masters who accepted their bid to the annual invitation would play a round-robin event. The same system is used today to determine the Absolute field with invitations now sent to those who have an established US Chess Federation CC rating over 2200. The Absolute championship of the US Chess Federation is akin to the over-the-board Closed Championship whereas the US Chess Federation�s Golden Knights is the correspondence version of the over-the-board US Open. The Absolute championship has now been held annually for over a quarter of a century and almost 2000 games have been contested during that time period.

Although long overdue, the US Chess Federation has decided to recognize the Absolute players by offering not only their games but also a short biography on each so you can get to know them. Player Index with bios received so far. Dave Burris, the 1995 Absolute champion, who has since passed away, was the first to offer up the idea of gathering these games which in turn would allow the US Chess Federation to write a book on this prestegious event and give recognition to these outstanding correspondence chess masters. We recently decided to go one step further and offer the games on the US Chess website! 500+ games

At the 2002 US OPEN Correspondence Chess workshop a proposal was considered which had been submitted by N. Eric Pedersen. It was his idea to post Absolute games on the US Chess Federation website as they represented the best CC that the US Chess Federation had to offer. This project, The Absolute Review was whole-heartedly endorsed by the committee.

Now the US Chess Federation, under the Correspondence Chess Directorship of Joan DuBois and her assistant, Stephanie Colley, and in conjunction with the following contributors: Michael Bates, Wesley T. Brandhorst, J. Franklin Campbell, Neil Brennen, Joseph Callaway, Hugo Concha, Humberto Cruz, Peter Cullen, John Dowling, Ed Duliba, Alex Dunne, Kurt Ehrgott, David Eisen, Ruth Ann Fay, Dan Fleetwood, Stephan Gerzadowicz, Stephen Ham, Timothy Harding, Robert Hux, Robert Jacobs, John Knudsen, Jan Koziol, Mrs. Edward H. Laird, William Lapham, N. Darrell LeGore, Michael Link, Anthony Mantia, Kristo Miettinen, Peter Michelman, James Monacell, John Mousessian, N. Eric Pedersen, Lloyd Rawley, Robert Rizzo, Joseph Shipman, Corky Schakel, Joseph Schwing, Gary Shure, John Skratulia, Dr. Ray Sproule, William Trim, Christopher van Dyck and Max Zavanelli, is pleased to offer past games from the Absolute Championships to you. This will continue to be an ongoing project as we will post additional games and bios as we receive them.

If you have not yet submitted your Absolute games and/or your bio (or update) (preferably with a photo) to the US Chess Federation, we ask that you do so. You can email your bio and photo using the Correspondence Chess email option from our Contact Us page: Contact Us.

We cannot thank Bob Rizzo enough as he has been the driving force for this project. Bob has volunteered many, many hours to help bring these games, now online, a reality for your enjoyment. Absolute games can be emailed to Bob at [email protected]