On a cold dreary Canadian-ish day, VAS1 faced yet another obstacle on its path towards normalcy. Although the engrained traumas associated with relegation had somewhat dissipated, we weren’t bold enough to envision competing for top honors.
Armed with a healthy team, we took on the challenge set by the Timman-less troops of Wageningen. Quite a disappointment on a personal level, as he was one of the first guys I followed as a youngster (starting at the 1985 Montpellier candidates tournament). He embodied everything we Canadians thought we knew of Dutch chess players: cool, polyvalent, smart, funny (and enjoying the odd doobie). Chess is one of those unique sporting events where one can hope to cross paths with legends and we all hoped he would somehow join. Fortunately, our small sorrow was immediately remedied by the sight of another legend to enter the Cygnus: Super GM Ivan Sokolov was now playing for Wageningen! Sure, our chances of losing the match dramatically increased, but who cares when you get an opportunity to see a guy like this at arms length.
Again, I’ll let others describe their own moment. But I’d like to point out a few observations:
1) The Tex / Rafael / Hilke train is not showing any signs of slowing down and they all got the job done in fashion.
2) There’s always something to be disappointed about when 10 players play. But on this special day, I was really proud of everyone, including Victor who faced Wageningen’s leader (and played better than he’ll allow himself to ever say, despite the loss). And including myself who fought back from a position of infinite ugliness.
3) But the heroes of the days were non-other than my 2 buddies who now deserve the spotlight. Sierk, who’s perhaps had an underwhelming year according to his standards, fought with poise and pizazz, pushing IM Van Eik to the brink. And when he lost his initiative, he was able to defend a very difficult endgame with confidence. Very very impressive. Daan sat on board 1 with black against none other than GM Sokolov. Daan doesn’t play the victim well, and had no intentions of giving away anything to the famed man who beat Kasparov in 1999 at Wijk and Zee (in 28 moves…). Mano-a-mano during the whole game, Daan took advantage of a slip and took over the initiative, which almost led to a winning advantage (Daan took a very responsible draw). Incredible!
And now, from the players themselves!
Tex: “After a decent opening from both sides, my opponent David van Eekhout started to slowly outplay me. Or maybe I was outplaying myself. Let’s say my opponent and I joined forces to outplay me. Luckily there were still quite some tactics in the position and in time trouble David made a mistake and I won.”
Ramon: “Ramon played a wild game. His opponent played a very original setup that slightly weakened his king. After winning a queen for rook+bishop+pawn Ramon aimed all his pieces at the weakened kingside. When the h7-pawn was won, an unopposed g6 pawn threatening to create another queen within a few moves convinced his opponent to resign.”
Marc: “My opponent, the friendly Erwin Oorbeek, played a set-up which I didn’t know well, and that I completely underestimated. After 15 moves, I was already under heavy strain and at risk of an infamous loss. Fortunately, my position was so ugly that I had no choice but to try and make it less visually disheartening for my teammates. It is in fact instructive:
White has exactly 28 different plans at his disposal. e5, g4-g5, f5, Nd5, etc… and I have no ideas of my own to improve the hygiene of my pieces. At least I’m happy with what I came up with: 18…Rae8 19.e5!? Bg8! 20.ed Qxd6 21.Qd6 cd 22.Nb5 Rd8 23.Rd1 a4 24.Nxd6 ab 25.ab Nxb3 26.Bb7 Nc5 27.Bc6! Rb8 a position that I had considered and that I considered to be potentially defensible. It turned out to be problematic for white to nurture the advantage and a draw later ensued.”
Rafael: “Overall a pretty smooth game. After a successful opening with black we got into the following position where black is really threatening to overrun white with his pawns. So in drastic measures Nxe5 was chosen as the only option. After …f4 this lead to some complications that ended in a rook vs rook and knight endgame where I could cleanly collect all of white’s pawns ending in a victory.”
Hilke: “In this typical benoni defense where black essentially shuffles pieces around in the back 2 ranks but is left with a passive position.
Here black can no longer move after white prevents the b6 break. White should aim to expand with g4 / h4. I played Kh1 for Bg1 but this was an inaccuracy (Bg3 was better); black could try and get some play after f5)”
Daan:
“I had a comfortable position after the opening. Sokolov had played for e3-e4 for some time but here after e4? fxe4 Bxf6 Bxf6 fxe4, he had missed Bh5! when Black is close to winning”
Here I was not sure how to continue, so I played Re1 Rxe1 Qxe1+ Kh2 Qe5+ with a perpetual, but apparently Qg3 is still very good for Black.
Victor: “I got outplayed. Then he missed a move, panicked and traded a rook unnecessarily which lead to a 0.00 drawn endgame. However I hadn’t blundered yet, so I gave him a free pawn and the 3 to 2 pawns with rooks ending was lost.”
Sierk: “I tried to play solid and go for moves I knew couldn’t be bad, although perhaps a bit soft. At some point I was a bit planless and got seduced to play a bit wilder. It got completely out of control but somehow I survived to an endgame. It turned out to be an interesting one. I was quite confident it was a draw, but not everybody in the analysis room agreed. What do you think? (I haven’t checked with the engine yet)”
Friso was kind enough to send a complete analysis of his game with annotations!
We all finished the evening dining all together and cheering the heroes who carried the day.
Here it is, on top of our division but with still quite a few games to go and quite a few scary teams to face. Let’s allow ourselves to dream of impossible things. Masterklass anyone? It hasn’t happened since 1983 in case you wondering….
