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Jorden strikes back
The match between Jan Timman and Jorden van Foreest isn’t over yet. Today, trailing with 3-1, the 16-year-old grandmaster struck back with a vengeance in a well-prepared attacking game. Anna-Maja Kazarian tried something similar, but with her it was improvisation in an opening in which Sopiko Guramishvili again proved to…
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Gupta takes over the baton
The leading positions in the open group are constantly changing. Each day one of the players wins and takes the lead, before, like a crab in a bucket he is pulled back by the teeming masses below him. Today Jan Werle was the head crab, who was dragged down by…
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Lecture by Jaan Ehlvest in Café Batavia, Amsterdam, on Sunday, October 25
Former top player Jaan Ehlvest from Estonia will give a lecture in Café Batavia, opposite Amsterdam Central Station, on Sunday October 25 from 14.00-17.00h. Ehlvest will talk about the difference between male and female chess players, about his own career, and about the differences in personalities between players. It goes…
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Blood-curdling duel
On the rest day of the Timman – Van Foreest match, tournament director Loek van Wely invited Jorden van Foreest to promote a few side activities. They rushed into Chess Biking and the new invention of Basque Chess, where the opponents play each other on two boards at the same…
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Timman strikes again
Anna-Maja Kazarian scored her first half point today. Sopiko Guramishvili did not press with white, and the peace was signed soon. Jan Timman won his second game in the match with Jorden van Foreest after a great fight with attractive tactical points. Guramishvili – Kazarian 1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4…
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Werle tricks Sengupta
Who could stop Deep Sengupta? That seemed like a legitimate question when after 20 or so moves we took a look at the position at the top board of the Open tournament. But Jan Werle had polished this tactical skills for this tournament, and he immediately grabbed the first small…
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Tough learning process for Kazarian
The life of a great chess talent is beautiful, but sometimes heavy. 15-year-old Anna-Maja Kazarian is trailing 4-0 in the match with Sopiko Guramishvili, and it’s hard lines for her. Today things went wrong again in the opening, which was the same as in the second round. Kazarian initially played…
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Clear lines
In the previous rounds we saw complications that were often bizarre. Today, especially the two routine players opted for clearer, more strategic paths. This yielded Jan Timman his first full point against Jorden van Foreest. Photo: Frans Peeters Van Foreest – Timman 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.Nf3…
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Sengupta and Gupta call the shots
Deep Sengupta seized a big opportunity today. He defeated his compatriot Das Debashis in a pretty quiet game in which Debashis blundered a pawn. Since Erwin l’Ami, despite fierce attempts, didn’t manage to break through Vishnu Prasanna’s rock-solid defences, both reached no further than 4 points and Sengupta took the…
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Contingency abounds
We are not halfway through the matches yet. Anything can still happen. But just like her husband Anish Giri last year against Alexey Shirov, Sopiko Guramishvili has struck mercilessly in the first two days. The struggle between Jorden van Foreest and Jan Timman is still balanced, but today too, the…
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Vishnu seizes his chance
Because the three leaders drew their games (the rivals Sengupta and l’Ami with each other, and Debashis against Benjamin Bok), Vishnu Prasanna became the co-leader with an outstanding victory over Jaan Ehlvest, who doesn’t have an easy time in this tournament so far. The Indian player, now also on 3½…
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Wildwest in the Matches
Today the two matches started with rockets and thunder strokes. Anna-Maja Kazarian tried too hard after the opening and went down tactically. The struggle between Jorden van Foreest and Jan Timman went heavily up and down. First Van Foreest seemed to be cruising to a win, but later it was…
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Grandmasters in trouble
Today’s biggest surprise in the Open was the defeat of the top-seed, Abhijeet Gupta, against his fellow countryman Ankit Rajpara. And with white, too – Gupta went down in a sideline of the Queen’s Gambit gone wrong. With the Dutch contingent things went better; Erwin l’Ami and Benjamin Bok won…
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Quite a push
Chairman Bert van der Haar of the tournament committee welcomed the visitors, especially the representative Ard van der Tuuk of the province of Drenthe and mayor Karel Loohuis of Hoogeveen. Van der Haar said that the continuation of the tournament had been under some pressure after Univé stopped as the…
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But was it that easy? Erwin l’Ami, the Dutch number one in this tournament, explained his game at the end of the commentator’s session of Joris Brenninkmeijer, and actually it had been less smoothed than it seemed.A pure Benoni, you don’t come across that too often nowadays’, said L’Ami.According to…
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Side Events
The 19th Hoogeveen Chess Tournament, which takes place from 17-24 October in the Hoogeveen town hall, includes a great number of attractive side events this year. Various alternative chess variants will be experimented with, there is a simultaneous exhibition by one of the match players, Sopiko Guramishvili, and every day…
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Hoogeveen also popular with Indian top players
Four grandmasters and two international masters from India, the country where chess has seen a terrific surge since Vishy Anand’s successes, will be present in the Hoogeveen Open. The player with the highest rating (also of the entire tournament) is Abhijeet Gupta. The former world youth champion (2008) has grown…
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Illustrious chess duo Ehlvest and Shabalov in Hoogeveen
The Hoogeveen Open has managed to attract two American chess aces: Jaan Ehlvest and Alexander Shabalov. Jaan Ehlvest (1962), of Estonian origin, was youth champion of the USSR in 1980, and European youth champion in 1983. In 1988 he made it to the Candidates’ Matches, where he lost to Artur…
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Strong contingent of Dutch players in Hoogeveen
he Dutch field of participants in the Hoogeveen Open will be led by a quartet of active grandmasters: Erwin l’Ami, Benjamin Bok, Sipke Ernst en Jan Werle. Two-time Dutch Open champion Erwin l’Ami won the Univé Open in 2012 and is a contender in any tournament, as we saw earlier…
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Sopiko Guramishvili and Anna-Maja Kazarian play chess match in Hoogeveen
The second match in the Hoogeveen Chess Tournament will be played between two talented young female players: Sopiko Guramishvili and Anna-Maja Kazarian. This match, with six games, takes place from 18-23 October in the town hall of Hoogeveen. With Anna-Maja Kazarian, besides Jorden van Foreest, a second Dutch top talent…
