Willem Jan Louis Verbeek was a general practicioner and obstretician in Wijk bij Duurstede, the Netherlands. In his spare time he was especially involved with chess – he was very concerned with the development of chess in the Netherlands, which was lagging behind elsewhere in the world.
Verbeek can be considered a chess master avant la lettre, amongst the first Dutch chess players able to play simultaneous blindfold chess. He is best known as the chief editor of the first Dutch chess magazine Sissa (1848-1874), which eventually became the first official magazine of the Dutch Chess Federation that was founded in 1873.
In an effort to bring order to the morass of chess rules that existed in the Netherlands, Verbeek published in 1848 the Nieuw Reglement op het gewoon schaakspelen (‘New regulation of chess’), which was adopted and then used throughout the country for years to come, until the Dutch Chess Federation adopted a new version in 1874.
In 1858, the first national chess tournament in Dutch history was organised in Nijmegen on Verbeek's initiative.
In 1861, he published De Hollandsche schaakspeler – een zakboek voor schaakspelers (‘The Dutch chess player – a pocket book for chess players’), which can be considered as the first book on modern chess in the Dutch language.
Kibitzing
