Thomas Mally 1943-2013

[Gerd Isenberg]

I just noticed the post by Ingo Althöfer in the German CSS forum on the death of Thomas Mally.

http://forum.computerschach.de/cgi-bin/ ... l?tid=7098

As member of the First Vienna Computer Chess Club, Thomas Mally was editor of Modul and PC-Schach, and further wrote for Computerschach und Spiele and the ICCA Journal. As chess programmer he was author of the PC program Wappler, which was sparring partner of Chrilly Donninger's Nimzo in the early 90s.

On January 07, 2013, at the beginning of a long and snowy midwinter period, Mally embarked on his probably last walk. He remained missing for over a year, and was ultimately found on March 27, 2014, in the Purkersdorfer Glasgraben close to the West Autobahn. Thomas Mally could be identified by ID and carried his orthopedic shoes.

http://regiowiki.at/index.php?title=Thomas_Mally

I can't remember I met him in person. But very much liked his writing style.

Bye Thomas.

[mclane]

its sad that he died.

you are right their articles were always a pleasure to read.
much knowledge and a good funny style.



i remember that i wrote many letters to the austrians,
concerning computerchess.

this was in MODUL times and later i never understood when they
changed to PC SCHACH.

maybe somewhere in my basement i still have those answers.

thomas mally will not be forgotten by the computerchess community.
we will read the old magazins and articles and remember him.

[wolfv]

I will miss Thomas, we corresponded for quite a while and he asked me to write a small piece on Novag Forte C as I was the first one to get it from Hong Kong as an insertable software module for my Super Expert, which was a beautiful wooden board that played attractive attacking chess. So I wrote the article and then we went on writing to each other, nice and warm snail mail letters from Vienna to Belgrade and Nis, and later on to Bologna and Ravenna. He also programmed a highly selective program that I used to have, it was buggy and experimental but did play well too. The year I had it must have been 1992 or so. Oh, yes, it was named Wappler , the program I mean.

So the people we used to know seem to be slowly and gradually passing away. May his soul rest in peace. Requiescat in pacem, Thomas Mally.

O, one little anecdoctal piece about him: his surname, Mally, would from time to time have the British customs officials raise their eyebrows as it sounded kind of Irish and at that time the IRA was just about everywhere.

Thanks for letting us know this, Gerd, and thanks for the kind words, Thorsten.