Coming up: ROC Aventus Weekender

Time flies, this weekend SBSA organises for the eleventh time the ROC Aventus weekender to decide who will be the new Open Apeldoorn Champion. You might remember from Peter’s report last year that the tournament is warmly recommended. full story »

Who gives in to whom?

Recently it became clear that next season (2007-2008) no less than four of the nine rounds of the Dutch Premier League will clash with the German Bundesliga rounds. For both Dutch and German chess professionals this is a very unfortunate situation. My question to the Dutch Federation concerning this issue caused a useful email discussion. full story »

A left-over analysis by a defeated man

Today a little extra from the Noteboom Tournament. GM Jan Smeets sent us the full score of his decisive game against the final winner, GM Predrag Nikolic. We ‘talked together’ the variations he added to the main moves. full story »

Predrag Nikolic wins 67th Noteboom

Last weekend the 67th edition of the Noteboom tournament took place in Leiden and Chessvibes was there – a personal report. Three good reasons to play in the Noteboom tournament:

1. Toughness training. The Noteboom tournament is a weekender, which means six games with a maximum of four hours each (105 min/40 moves and 15 min/finish) in one weekend: Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon. The light version is taking a bye (a free round that counts for a draw), the heavy version is going out on Friday night and Saturday night. The tournament does not count for FIDE rating, so one can affort some experimenting. For the Dutch chess youth the circuit of weekenders is a good (tough) way to chess improvement. full story »

Fritz, Rybka, or think for yourself after all?

In the glorious past grandmaster games still had something invincible, something you would look at with respect and would not dare giving your opinion about. Grandmaster games were something very complicated, something you should not show to beginners, since it would only confuse them. Since the rise of the computer, databases and engines, that is all gone. You can check in the database up to which point it was still theory and from that point on you can judge the players’ performance with any engine. The audience at home knows exactly what is happening from move to move and top players are complaining about the decline of respect. full story »

Roeland Pruijssers International Master

Seventeen-year-old Roeland Pruijssers made his third IM norm in Groningen with a full point overscore, passing the 2400 mark in the process and thereby becoming International Master! Sipke Ernst won the Harmonie Chess Tournament with an impressive 7 out of 9, directly followed by Roeland with 6,5 out of 9. full story »

Karsten Müller on the 1st match game Kramnik-Deep Fritz

During the Christmas celebration in our chessclub HSK I asked the well-known endgame expert & grandmaster Karsten Müller whether he would be interested to occasionally & spontaneously contribute to the interesting project Doggers-schaak (about which he had read in one of the German chess magazines!). Müller is the author of Fundamental Chess Endings and Secrets of Pawn Endings (both together with Frank Lamprecht). Below you find his first contribution: how Kramnik could have beaten Deep Fritz in their first match game. full story »

A game that deserved more

Zoals eerder beloofd, zouden we hier nog terugkomen op het weekendtoernooi van Apeldoorn, midden september, vanwege de interessante partij Ernst-Van Delft. Ondertussen heb ik een analyse gemaakt van de partij, die helaas te snel tot een einde kwam toen ik verschrikkelijk blunderde.As was promised earlier, we would get back to the weekend tournament of Apeldoorn, mid-September, because of the very interesting game Ernst-Van Delft. In the meantime I analysed this game, which unfortunately came to an end too quickly when I blundered terribly. full story »

Black is beautiful

Ik moet mijn Aeroflotanalyses nog afmaken, heb inmiddels ook een toernooi in Reykjavik gespeeld, maar wil bij dezen alvast berichten van mijn belevenissen in Birmingham. Samen met Evi [Zickelbein, Merijns vriendin – red.] deed ik mee aan het slotweekend van de 4NCL, de Four Nations Chess League, oftewel de Britse competitie. Alle ronden van deze competitie worden centraal gespeeld, hetgeen een sterk community-idee geeft. Voorts moet ieder team verplicht één vrouw opstellen. Er is weinig binding met de eigen club, teamgenoten kennen elkaar vaak niet en willen elkaar ook niet kennen. Een gruwel naar onze Duitse en Nederlandse maatstaven, maar daar heel gewoon. Je speelt je partij en gaat daarna in de bar een pint drinken met je vrienden. full story »