Uri Avner

Uri Avner was born in 1941 in Petah Tikva

Uri Avner was born in Petah Tikva in 1941. He composed his first chess problem at age 12. Two years later he received an honorable mention in a problem composing contest in the Netherlands.

From age 17 he focused on competitive chess. He won the IDF chess championship in 1961 and again a year later, when he also became Tel Aviv champion. He played for Israel at the student olympiads in 1964, 1965 and 1966, and in 1965 the team took second place.

In the 1960s and 1970s he played in the national league for the ASA Tel Aviv University club. Toward the end of the 1970s he returned to composing problems. In the world team composing championship of 1980 to 1983 he won first place in the directmate section, and he won it again in the 1984 to 1988 championship.

He organized Israel's solving championship and led the national solving team, which placed third in 1993 and first from 1996 to 1998, in 2001 and in 2004. He organized world composition congresses in Bat Yam in 1983, Tel Aviv in 1996 and Netanya in 1999. He also edited the chess federation monthly Shahmat and published the journal Variantim.

In 2006 he was elected president of the world chess composition federation. He served four years and then became its honorary president. He died in 2014.