The Dutch Championships took place in Boxtel, Holland, from June 25th to 5th
July, 2011. Top seeds were Anish Giri, Jan Smeets, Ivan Sokolov and Erwin L'Ami
(missing were van Wely, Stellwagen and Tiviakov). The average rating 2581 which
made it a category 14 event.
The open championship was won by 17-year-old GM Anish Giri, who scored a thumping
7.5/9 points, putting him a full two points ahead of his nearest rival (GM Ivan
Sokolov). Anish won his last five games of the tournament in a row and chalked
up a performance of 2849. He stands to gain 16 points from the championship
in the next FIDE rating list.
The women's section, a double round robin with six players, was won by Peng
Zhaoqin, who finished with 9.0/10 points, a clear three points ahead of her
nearest rival. With this victory Peng has, as far as we can tell, won the Dutch
Women's Championship for the thirteenth time, starting with a title
in 1997, and then from 2000 to 2011 in uninterrupted sequence. Incidentally,
Peng: your Wiki entry
needs to be updated!
What (on earth, actually), we ask, looking at the table above, happened to
Peng in her round seven game against Martine Middelveld? This:
Peng Zhaoqin (2375) - Middelveld,M (2120) [D66]
ch-NED Women Boxtel NED (7), 02.07.2011
1.Nf3 e6 2.c4 d5 3.d4 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e3 Nbd7 6.Nc3 c6 7.Rc1 0-0 8.Bd3
dxc4 9.Bxc4 b5 10.Bd3 Bb7 11.0-0 a6 12.Qc2 Rc8 13.Rfd1 h6 14.Bxf6 Nxf6 15.e4
Qb6 16.e5 Nd7 17.Bh7+ Kh8 18.Be4 Qc7 19.a3 c5 20.d5 exd5 21.Nxd5 Bxd5 22.Rxd5
Rfd8 23.h4 Nb6 24.Rdd1 Rxd1+ 25.Qxd1 Rd8 26.Qe2 Nc4 27.e6?! A small
inaccuracy – she should have moved the bishop to c2 or b1. 27...fxe6
28.Bc2 Qf4 29.Re1 Bf6 30.Qxe6 Rf8??
31.Qxa6? White missed the beautiful 31.Qf7!! Be5 (31...Rxf7
32.Re8+ Rf8 33.Rxf8#) 32.Qg6 with an easy win [thanks tor René Olthof
for calling our attention to this line]. 31...Nd2. White is
a pawn up and decides to grab another one: 32.Qxb5?? Do you
see the tactics? 32...Nxf3+ 33.gxf3 Bd4, pinning the f-pawn
and threatening ...Qg3+ and mate to follow. 34.Qe2 Qg3+ 35.Kf1 Qh3+
36.Kg1 Qg3+ 37.Kf1 (the repetition is just to gain time) 37...Qh2,
and with 38.Qd2 Qh1+ 39.Ke2 Qxf3+ 40.Kf1 Bxf2 and unspeakably gruesome things
to follow, Peng resigned. 0-1. Had Peng instead played 31.Qf7!!
and won game brilliantly, scoring 10.0/10 points, the ChessBase crosstables
algorithm would have assigned her a performance rating of 2948.
Peng discussing her game (at move 29) with Anish Giri and others: GM Steingrimsson
from Iceland and Peng's husband André. Note that Anish has picked up
the habit of spinning
a piece from his hero Boris Gelfand.
The Dutch Chess Championship was sponsored by SintLukas,
Bergen Conference and Podium
Boxtel.
Picture gallery
Second: GM Ivan Sokolov, 2645, with 5.5/9 and a 2653 performance
Third: GM Sipke Ernst, rated 2596, with 5.0/9 and a 2618 performance
Fourth: GM Robin Swinkels, 22, rated 2483, with 5.0/9 and a 2631 performance
Fifth: GM Friso Nijboer 2538, with 5.0/9 and a 2625 performance
Sixth: GM Wouter Spoelman, former Dutch Youth Champion
(1999), with 5.0/9 points and a performance of 2622
Seventh: GM Jan Smeets, 2647, with 4.0/9 and a 2536 performance.
Jan was Dutch Champion in 2008 and 2010 (i.e. he was the reigning champ)
Eighth: GM (since last week) Daan Brandenburg, 24, rated 2535, 3.5/9, 2509
performance
Ninth: GM Erwin l'Ami, 2611, husband of Alina,
with 2.5/9 and a 2413 performance
Tenth: IM Ruud Janssen, 32, rated 2512, with 2.0/9 and a 2372 performance
The family of Robin Swinkels
Lisa Hortensius, 20, rated 2111
WIM Arlette van Weersel, rated 2246, who did an internship Marketing, Communication
and Sport Hospitality at Close2Sports as part of her bachlor degree in Barcelona,
Spain.
Arlette, who is also a Beach and Event Manager, without glasses
Arlette van Weersel poses in front of one of the giant posters
set up all around the hall by a Theatre & Music company
Martine Middelveld with a Podium
Boxtel image
Annemarie Volkers yelling into the ear in a Boxtel poster
WIM Anne Haast, rated 2221, who turned 18 on July 1st
Coaches FM Petra Schuurman, IM Herman Grooten, coachee
Annemarie Volkers, rated 2046, chess coach and film editor at Freshmen
Media, which
has been doing the films at the end of the rounds. Annemarie has a degree in
Sports Science.
Martine Middelveld works at the Bonger Institute of Criminology and is writing
her
master thesis on drug and alcohol use among heterosexuals and homosexuals
Dutch original: IM Manuel Bosboom, who played in a parallel tournament
Participant Jan Smeets, commentator Hans Böhm, fret over a dead banana
But is it legal? Someone in a playful mood
Frans Peeters, Master of Bokeh
The photographer who provided these spectacular pictures is Frans Peeters,
who started out as an English teacher at a large comprehensive school in Goes,
Zeeland. Since 1998 he has been teaching of computer science, runs a website
for teachers of ICT in The Netherlands, and incidentally translated the
manuals for Playchess and ChessBase 11 into Dutch. Frans is married to Dian,
and the two have a son (22) and a daughter (24), both pretty good players (around
1900-2000 FIDE). He himself is responsible for the youth department of the chess
club De Pion, which has 130 members and
70 young players.
Obviously Frans' hobby is photography. We have rarely seen such mastery of
bokeh, which is the aesthetic blur in out-of-focus areas of an image.
Bokeh occurs when photographers like Frans, who works with a Nikon D7000 with
a very good lens, mounted on a tripod, deliberately use a shallow focus to highlight
a subject and leave the surroundings out of focus. You can see more of his work
here.
Copyright
Peeters/ChessBase
