by Pascal Charbonneau
On March 28, Vas 1 took the journey to fight an aptly named Magnus Club in Schagen. The stakes were high, as the team looked to cement their lead at the top of the league standings. While chess nerves seem to be heightened by a lack of practice, it is hard for your humble servant to feel the pressure: in all the matches for which I had played with Vas, the team won by such a significant margin that my presence seemed to be more for moral support, bad jokes, and as a drinking companion than for my chess acumen. Alas, in Schagen on March 28, things were not going to be so simple.
Magnus had a strong team, and I suppose this is somewhat unique in the Dutch League, but there was a cluster of grandmasters on boards 6 to 8, none of them facing each other.
The first decisive result of the match, one that would perhaps set that tone, was Victor’s convincing, solid win over Wilko Van der Grath. A technical game, where Victor controlled the right squares, won a pawn, and finished off the game with a nice exchange sacrifice and unstoppable passed pawns.
Meanwhile, at some point I took a walk as I do during games, and looked at Rafael’s position. A complete mess – where from some new theoretical variation he embarked on a perhaps too risky adventure to take a few pawns, leaving his kingside rather exposed. I seemed to spot a rather crushing move; I quickly rerouted and went elsewhere, as sometimes I feel lingering indicates that there might be a cool move. And indeed that move would have put us in a very, very tough spot. But Rafael escaped, and the game ended in a draw after more craziness.
Perhaps the opponent we all rooted for the most was our own Tex De Wit. Unfortunately, today’s game took a rather unexpected turn, with Tex making a rare (for him!) positional mistake and having a tough position from which he could not recover. By his own words:
I had a tough day at the office. Made some wrong choices after the opening and got a slightly worse position. Mortal players would have still allowed me some chances, but Manuel Bosboom is a wizard and I got crushed.
On the next board, Daan lost a very tough black game against Alexander Van Beek in a Dutch that went wrong; Van Beek played a strong game, with a positional queen sacrifice (for Rook + Bishop) that left black tangled up and with little counterplay. A well played game by Daan’s opponent.
Ramon, meanwhile, brought the order back to its natural state by dismantling Van Edmond’s Gruenfeld in typical Ramon fashion. Technical, methodical, kind of looks easy.
On board 1, a tense battled developed between our own Take (White) vs De Weerd. In a system that De Weerd is apparently extremely familiar with, Take played well and the game went back and forth a bit before ending in what seemed to be a fair draw.
Tied match, leaving Friso’s game with black against Stolwick, Anton’s game with black against Smit, Raghav, who was making his expected debut for Vas 1, who was matched with white against the legendary Van Den Doel, and my game with black
Friso’s was the first to end. It was a very interesting game, where Friso felt, correctly of course, that he should be better / winning. Accuracy (and also some very difficult to find, computer like motifs) were required, but it is always frustrating when you feel the game did not get the beautiful conclusion it deserved. Friso’s notes:
The match is still tied.
Anton had declined a draw offer and was fighting hard to create chances, we all had faith, he does not let us down. Raghav was fighting bravely and fiercely against Van Den Doel, but had slightly the worse of it. It certainly felt like Anton and I needed to win.
My game was the first of the last three to end. In general I felt very happy with this game, although the computer found some of my choices at the very end to be less than optimal. I managed to steer the opening towards a position I was very comfortable playing for two results with black, and was able to achieve the typical sicilian break. I’m including some brief notes here; also, I would not want to omit mentioning that in the absence of our valiant captain, Viktor, whose game was the first to finish, provided him with useful updates about our match situation. In an attempt, I can think of no other reason, to make sure Marc comes back to the Netherlands with absolutely no hair on his head, Viktor said “Pascal sacrificed his queen” – just like that – without commentary. By the time I did sacrifice the queen, my opponent resigned more or less instantly. Sorry, Marc.
Anton, of course, pulled through, and thus Vas, whose destiny we all know, pulled through in a nice ending, grinding down his opponent with great technique. And Raghav, quite a baptism to Vas 1, against a monster, played a very long game and almost got a draw, in the end ground down by Van Den Doel in a bishop of same color endgame.
With Caissa also securing a victory, our work is not finished. But we are in control of our destiny, and would not have it any other way.
