Luc Winants Obituary, Death – Luc Winants was Belgium’s top chess player for a significant portion of the country’s history and was the nation’s only grandmaster on multiple occasions. He competed for his country in a number of Chess Olympiads and won every game he played in two of those tournaments. Luc Winants passed away yesterday, February 7, at the age of Luc Winants was born on January 1, 1963 in the town of Watermael-Boitsfort,
which is located close to Brussels. His father, Henri Winants, was also an accomplished chess player and won the Belgian Individual Championship in 1975 alongside Johan Goormachtigh and José Tonoli. He passed away in 2014. Luc Winants competed as a junior in a number of international youth Opens during his younger years. Luc Winants was one of the competitors at the U20 World Youth Championship that was held in Copenhagen in 1982. At the age of 19 years old, he took part in the competition and finished in the middle of the field.
Luc Winants participated in his first Chess Olympiad in 1984, representing Belgium on the first reserve board. This was his first international competition. Between 1986 and 2016, he participated in a total of eight more Chess Olympiads for Belgium, playing on the top board from 2002 until 2006 and then again in 2014 and 2016. Winants had the opportunity to compete against Magnus Carlsen and other world-class chess players at the 2016 Chess Olympiad.
Winants was victorious in both Thessaloniki in 1984 and Calvia in 2004 without suffering a single loss. In the history of Belgian players, only Albéric O’Kelly de Galway had accomplished this feat before, and he did so in Moscow in 1956. Additionally, Winants competed for Belgium in the European Team Championships in both the year 1989 and 2007, Among Winant’s many victories in tournaments are the Belgian National Championship in 1986 (which he won with a score of 10 out of 12) and the Barcelona Tournament in 1991, both of which he took first place in.
Winants participated in team competitions in a number of different leagues. He played for Slough Chess Club in the British Four Nations Leage, for C.E. Le Cavalier Differdange in Luxembourg, and for Rotterdam in the Netherlands for a considerable amount of time. Winants has been playing for En Passant Bunschoten-Spakenburg in the Netherlands since the 2013-14 season. Winants was a member of L’Echiquier Cappellois, which is based in Cappelle la Grande, in France, and SC Bann, which is based in Germany.