Warmerdam and Keetman win the Dutch Championships

by André Schulz
7/16/2024 – Max Warmerdam was the rating favourite in the open competition of the Dutch Championships. He defeated Sergey Tiviakov in the final to win the event. Somewhat surprisingly, Maaike Keetman defeated multiple national champion Anne Kuipers-Haast 2-0 in the final of the women's tournament. | Photos: Harry Gielen

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Knockout competitions

From 6 to 13 July, the Galgenwaard football stadium in Utrecht hosted the Dutch Championships, with an open competition and a women's competitions. Both tournaments were organised in a knock-out format, the open championship with 16 participants and the women's championship with 12 participants. Two classical games were played in each match, followed by a play-off in the event of a tie.

The two best Dutch players, Anish Giri and Jorden van Foreest, were absent, but former World Championship candidate Jan Timman once again took part in the championship.

Max Warmerdam and Sergey Tiviakov reached the final in the open group. Warmerdam had eliminated Benjamin Bok in the semifinal and had previously won against Liam Vrolijk and Leandro Slagboom. Tiviakov won the semifinal duel between successful chess coaches against Ivan Sokolov after beating Erwin l'Ami.

In the first game of the final, Tiviakov didn't achieve much with the Moscow Variation against Warmerdam's Sicilian Defence and came under pressure after the transition to a heavy-piece ending. Warmerdam subsequently missed some better opportunities, but eventually won an instructive rook ending.

In the second game, Sergey Tiviakov threw in the towel early on and drew the game with a triple repetition of positions, thus losing the final match.

Maaike Keetman's victory over multiple Dutch champion Anne Kuipers-Haast, which was also very smooth with a 2-0 score, was relatively surprising.

In the first game of the match, Keetman playing the white pieces and, with an extra pawn, reached an endgame with rook and knight against rook and bishop. The new national champion won the ensuing rook endgame in a technically clean manner.

In the second game, Kuipers-Haast wanted to equalise by force and speculatively sacrificed a knight on f7 in online blitz style.

All games - Open Tournament

All games - Women's Tournament

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André Schulz started working for ChessBase in 1991 and is an editor of ChessBase News.