Jan Kotrç

Jan Kotrč (also Johann Kotrč) (* 23 August 1862 in Bielitz; † 17 October 1943 in Vlachovo Březí) was a Czech chess player, chess composer and publicist.

Tournaments
Behind Jan Kvicala he took a shared 2nd place together with Karel Traxler in Prague 1891 at the 3rd Congress of the Bohemian Chess Federation, shared 4th-6th in Dresden 1892 at the 7th Congress of the German Chess Federation in the main tournament A, which was won by Paul Lipke. He won a match against Josef Kvicala (+3 =2 -0) in Prague 1893 and 8th place in Vienna 1899/1900 in the Kolisch Memorial Tournament (the winner was Géza Maróczy).

Publicist
In 1884, Kotrč published Šach-Mat, the first Czech chess newspaper, and from 1896, together with his brother-in-law Karel Traxler, České listy šachové. From 1882, he ran a chess club, which was based in the Jedličkova coffee house in Prague. In 1899, Kotrč founded the first chess corner in a Czech daily newspaper in the Národní listy and ran it until 1900.

Kotrč moved to Vienna in 1903 and worked there as a newspaper editor for the last four decades of his life. In the interwar period, he published the Wiener Arbeiter-Schachzeitung, a bibliophile rarity today.

Chess composition
Jan Kotrč was one of the leading Czech chess composers. He was a representative of the Bohemian School.

Works
Kotrč, Jan; Traxler, Karel: Chess problems from the years 1884-1910. Vienna 1910.
Kotrč, Jan: Hra v šachy. 1911
Kotrč, Jan: Textbook of the game of chess. 1920
Kotrč, Jan: The game of chess. 1926
Kotrč, Jan: Openings in the modern game of chess. 1934

On the Germain Website pdb.dieschwalbe.de can be found 133 chess problems by him.

Source: de.wikipedia.org