Selection out of more than 50 Endgame studies composed by:
Volker Hergert
(Germany / Switzerland 11.9.1963)
Recent picture.
At Swisschess we can read:
At the 2022–2024 World Championship in Composing of Miniatures (miniature problems and studies with a maximum of seven pieces), Volker Hergert won the world championship title in the Studies category.
The 62-year-old, a German native who has lived in Switzerland since 2005 and is also a Swiss citizen, resides in Jona and is a passive member of the Glarus Chess Club, where he has also organized problem chess evenings. He competed in the World Championship under the Swiss flag.
Forty-four chess composers from 16 countries competed for gold, silver, and bronze. Volker Hergert, also a published author, who has retired from tournament play, won the highly competitive Studies category (nine participants) with 20.5 points, narrowly beating Russian Sergei Osintsev (20) and German Martin Minski (19). This victory also earned him the title of Candidate Master.
Volker Hergert only began submitting studies for tournaments in 2022. Some of these will likely appear in the next FIDE Album – including collaborative works with Martin Minski.
---------------------------------------
In 1993 he wrote a book about the Blackmar Diemer gambit where also can be read that he was a strong correspondence chessplayer:
---------------------------------------
He is working as portfolio manager for multi-asset class at LGT Group.
Volkert about himself:
I started playing chess at the age of 5. My first teacher was my grandpa, Emil Krebs, who had been a strong player in the 30s (champion of Solingen three times). He was very fond of endgames and one of my first chess books that I studied as a kid was Capablanca's Last Chess Lectures. As I did not find many opponents for practical play, though, neither in my 300 inhabitants village (around 25km southeast of Aachen, directly at the Belgian border) nor in my family, I started to compose endgame studies (very simple ones) at the age of 10 and continued to do so throughout my teenage years. None of them ever has been published so far. In 1982, I finally joined a chess club and for the next four decades my chess activities focused on playing rather than composing. I joined the chess group at my university (Saarbrücken) where Herbert Bastian became my teacher. After my studies of economics I started to work in Mainz in the financial industry and became a good friend of Gerd Treppner and Jens Beutel with whom I played a lot. Later on, I worked in Frankfurt at different financial institutions and finally, since early 2005, in Switzerland. Given my challenging profession and that I had family with kids relatively early in my life, I have consequently renounced on participating in tournaments and instead played a lot privately and also in correspondence chess (I only tried the internet platforms briefly and did not like the fact that de facto you only blitz there). In the meantime, I hold both German and Swiss citizenships, having strong roots in both countries.
I started to compose again during the Corona lockdowns and thus have been active again since 2021 with first publications in 2022. I have stopped playing to completely focus on endgame study composition in my leisure time.
Other hobbies include long distance running, skiiing, kayaking, table tennis, tennis, music (I play the mandolin in a band) and different kinds of geosciences.
Playing a rapid game against GM Jonathan Speelman (and winning!) 2016.
Playing in a specific kind of simultaneous exhibition as a guest of the charity event
after the London Chess Classic Dec 2026.
Jon Speelman was consulted when playing against Aronian.
This game ended in a draw.
----------------------------------------------