Last Monday May 22 we at the West Orange Chess Club tragically lost our Club Secretary Ari Minkov at the all too young age of 41. He had been our secretary for the last several years and in addition to keeping club contact information and other duties he was the sole webmaster of our club website.
In addition to his club duties he was a very strong chess player who for several periods of time over the past several years had an Expert United States Chess Federation rating of over 2000. The pinnacle of his success at the club was his winning of the Club Championship in 2012.
But what stood out more than any of the above was his personality. He always had a smile on his face and was always in a positive mood. He never took losing too hard and more importantly he never let his winning get to his head. He would never show disrespect to a lower rated opponent and would always be willing to go over the game with his opponent, no matter the result of the game or the strength of the opponent.
In addition to his positive attitude he never took himself too seriously. He would be willing to engage in conversation and showed interest in almost any subject but he had a special liking of mathematical, scientific and political discussion. He was correct most of the time but in the instances where he may not have been correct he would always handle corrective criticism with appreciation that he was able to learn something new.
And even though I personally have not been attending the club basically since early 2019 and only personally saw him once since then he participated in numerous email threads with myself and others since then regarding his favorite subjects and anything else we would bring up. His specialty was providing numerous links to educational articles to help enhance everyone's understanding of the subjects he would take the time to research. He was so active in these threads it was really no different than had I been attending the club for the last four years and seen him every week.
So needless to say from his club secretarial functions, his competitive chess play with the best the club has to offer and his positivity he will be sorely missed. And just in the last week, the absence of these email threads is something I am having difficulty getting used to.
But as a club we need to carry on the best we can even though it clearly will never be quite the same without him. We basically have a plan in place for now to cover his club functions and as the details are finalized we will be sure to pass that along. And specifically as for the website, the plan is either to carry on with the current one or establish a new one, which will hopefully be very similar, and maintaining it in the not too distant future. But in the meantime we will keep everyone updated via email as well as updating our other pages, of which I will provide the links below.
Chess.com member page (this page): www.chess.com/member/westorangechessclub
Chess.com club page: www.chess.com/club/west-orange-chess-club
Facebook group page: www.facebook.com/groups/2239424179432376
Keep in mind to access the Facebook page one must have a Facebook account and be invited to the group by the admin Andy Chan.
Ari, you will truly be missed.
Ari Minkov: 1982-2023
Bryan Cohen,
West Orange Chess Club
