René C. H. Raijmaekers from the Netherlands (born in 1950) is the tournament's oldest participant and also one of the most active correspondence chess players from the very beginning.

Before retiring a few years ago, he worked as an accountant with specialisation in non-profit organisations. Besides chess René likes cultural sciences (history, philosophy, arts and literature) and also walking around in cities and nature.

He quickly recovered from a temporary slump in his correspondence chess rating between 2001 and 2006 to 2294, returning to 2420 within a year and finally breaking the 2500 mark in 2017.  In 2007, he was awarded the title Correspondence Chess Senior International Master (SIM).

René achieved a large part of his successes as a team player for the Netherlands, which he represented in the 20th Olympic final on board 2 in 2016-2018 and on board 4 in 2020/21.

In 2024, he achieved his first GM norm in a category 11 (WS/GMN/A) norm tournament.