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Fridman wins Dutch Lightning Title
1 July 2008 11:20 AM
Germany’s strongest grandmaster Daniel Fridman is not a bad blitz lightning player either. Last week he won the Open Dutch Lightning Championships and lots of spectacular videos were recorded.
The 6th Open Dutch Lightning Chess Championship was held on Saturday, June 21st, but we wanted to wait for the videos before publishing this article. Two years ago this tournament was kind of an eye-opener for me as far as chess videos are concerned: just for fun I recorded a few on a Nikon Coolpix photo camera and everybody loved to watch it.
Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the last two editions but the good news is that the organizers recorded many games themselves. You’ll find a few videos at the end of this article.
The winner was Daniel Fridman. After finished shared first with Hungarian IM Gyula Iszak in the final group, Fridman needed six tiebreak games to win the cup. He succeeded Floris van Assendelft, who finished shared fifth with IM Manuel Bosboom - both of them former winners.
Among the 152 participants was GM Loek van Wely, who had returned from the Ukraine shortly before. First seeded, KingLoek couldn’t live up the expectations: after the first 28 games (oops, did we mention lightning chess means just two minutes on the clock?) he didn’t have enough points to qualify for the top final group, consisting of 18 players.
It was an exciting final. After 8 rounds, IM Gyula Iszak and local (Apeldoorn) hero Stefan Kuipers were leading. Closer to the end, the favorites appeared on top of the standings and in the end, Daniel Fridman and Gyula Iszak had collected 14 points out of 17 games. This meant a 2.5-point gap with IMs Merijn van Delft and Ekrem Cekro.
The first tiebreak game was won by Fridman, but then Iszak levelled the score impressively. The Hungarian also won the third game, but then it was Fridman’s turn to fight back. After winning both game five and six, the thrilling final and a successful tournament came to an end.
Lots of spectators watching the tiebreak final
Below there are videos of the final; more videos, photos and results can be found at the tournament website.
Tiebreak games 3 & 4 between GM Daniel Fridman & IM Gyula Iszak
Tiebreak games 5 & 6 between GM Daniel Fridman & IM Gyula Iszak
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Truely fascinating and impressive videos!
As far as the last rating list is concerned, both Naiditsch and Khenkin stronger German GMs than Fridman.
Don’t let Irina Krush watch these videos!
For some reason the video won’t show (here or on the tournament website) with IE7 on Vista with Adobe Flash Player version 9,0,124,0 installed.
Direct links to YouTube:
Tiebreak games 1 & 2 between GM Daniel Fridman & IM Gyula Iszak
Tiebreak games 3 & 4 between GM Daniel Fridman & IM Gyula Iszak
Tiebreak games 5 & 6 between GM Daniel Fridman & IM Gyula Iszak
PS: Seems to be an issue with my internet connection (or piece of crap vista). After closing all browserwindows & reloading this page a few times the videos finally appeared. (Presumably some crucial bits or bytes fail to load preventing the videos to appear.)
First Zatonskih wins an Armaggedon match against Krush(ed), now Fridman wins the Dutch lightning title. A coincidence? I think not
Great videos and event.
One notice: I don’t like the fact that in the last game Fridman was rolling the additional queen in his hand. He did it for most of the time during the last game. It disturbs the view, event if it isn’t directly on your view. And especially when you have 2 minutes for all of your game.