The journalists accredited at the international tournament in Palma de Mallorca, ESP announced the 'cold-blooded killer at the chessboard' Dannish GM Bent Larssen as the best Grandmaster of 1967. Next year on the initiative of Mr. Jorge Puch International Association of Chess Press (AIPE) was founded; besides releasing chess editions this association counted the votes and declared top ten GMs. At first there were journalists who voted but year by year the number of the voters increasing: more arbiters, trainers, organizers, and publishing in press Grandmasters were joining to polling process. Though the formal leader of AIPE was Mr. Sven Novrup from Denmark, Mr. Puch delivered the prize Oscar by himself. For five years this prize had shaped in a statue of a peasant on a mule, in 1976 it looked like a figure of a bear cub at an oak (the same is situated on the square in Madrid) and afterwards for about fifteen years a silver girl under umbrella (nearly exact copy of a piece of sculpture decorating the famous fountain in Barcelona). Unfortunately the history of Oscar was interrupted by a sudden death of the founder.
But ten years ago the Russian Chess Magazine "64" decided to breathe a new life in this project by involving world chess society into voting. At first the prize looked like an image of ever-young Moscow City, and nowadays it is a statue of Enchanted Wanderer, the character of the novel by Russian famous writer Leskov. This image was embodied in bronze by the sculptor A. Smirnov.