The ChessBase field trip
Helgoland is a small German island, just over a mile long, with a population
of 1,650. It is approximately two hours' sailing time from the mouth of the
river Elbe. Originally Helgoland belonged to the Danes, but in 1807 during
the Napoleonic wars it was seized by the British, who gave up the island to
Germany in 1890 (in return for Zanzibar). Helgoland became a major naval base,
and in April 1945 over a thousand allied bombers attacked the islands, leaving
nothing standing. On 18 April 1947, the Royal Navy detonated 6800 tons of explosives
in a concerted attempt to obliterate the main island. Only the military installations
were destroyed. In 1952 the islands were restored to the German authorities,
where it became a holiday resort that enjoys a tax exempt status.
We at ChessBase like to do things in style, so instead of taking the three
hour slow boat we took a ship that just might have been the inspiration for
NASA's
X-43A scramjet
Forget propellers, this thing runs on high-speed water jets and gets you to
Helgoland in a fraction of the time traditional ships take.
Birds roosting on the cliffs of Helgoland, which is one of Germany's foremost
bird sanctuaries
You can only stare at the water jets in awe for that long. The ChessBase team
spent the return trip playing games and solving quizzes.
One of the quizzes was to guess who would win the European soccer championship,
and one of the ChessBase staff who guessed most of the places right was Jeroen
van den Belt, who in normal life looks after the 3D graphics of Fritz, the
online database, the Chess Media System and other odds and ends. By guessing
the correct winners of the European Championship Jeroen won a special prize.
Which brings us to today's subject of discourse.
The luckiest man in the world
The prize Jeroen won was a one-hour lesson from WGM Almira Skripchenko, onetime
European champion. In chess, we hasten to stress, even thought some
of the pictures below would suggest that it may have very appropriately been
connected with soccer instead.
And this is the lady Jeroen got his chess lesson from, during last weekend's
German Team Championships. Almira plays for Werder
Bremen, where the chess department is part of the club that has one of
the strongest national soccer teams. Almira has become the spokesperson
of the club, the soccer model whose picture is on posters all over the
city.
This is Jeroen getting instructions from one of the world's leading women
players, while fellow programmer Mathias Feist looks on in envy
You follow what I'm saying, Jeroen?
This, dear friend, is what you have to do in the position
Almira in full training mode
In the hall outside the German Bundesliga is under way
Some final points are made, some last instructions for the road
In the end Jeroen gives his teacher a typical present from Holland: wooden
shoes
Yes, that's what elegant chess teachers are wearing these days
Afterwards a visit to the Christmas Market in Bremen's historical city
And there Almira finds some friends from her childhood fairy tales, the Bremen
Town-Musicians
The soccer model
And what about the posters for the soccer club? The ones that you see all
over Bremen? Due to our very special relations with the Bremen sports club
(actually to Almira) we were able to obtain not just the original shot of the
poster but plenty of outtakes.
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