Dutch Treat 
by Hans Ree

ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CHESSPLAYER

During a recent tournament in Leeuwarden, capital of the Dutch
province Friesland, I had a conversation with Jonathan Speelman
about our ways of earning money and he told me that recently he
had found a nice little sideline. The Dutch director Marleen Gorris,
who won an Oscar this year, was going to make a film based on
Nabokov's novel "The Defence" and Speelman was hired as chess
advisor. Sometimes one hears an interesting bit of news at chess
tournaments, though one trembles at the thought of what will
happen to Nabokov's poor Luzhin in the hands of a fiercely
feminist director.

Speelman said that to his shame he had to confess that he had
never read the book till the end. "I cannot read this horrible book."
I told him that I had found it admirable, but that was not his point.
"Oh, yes, I am sure it is a fine novel, but I can't stand to read about
chessplayers as maladjusted eccentrics. As in Stefan Zweig's book
and in Nabokov's too. Horrible." He shivered, hunched and brought
his arms near to his body, as if a cold polar wind was suddenly
blowing in the restaurant. "Sometimes they are like that," I said.
"Sometimes," Speelman reluctantly admitted, and he could hardly
have said otherwise during a tournament that had among its
participants Semion Isaakevich Dvoirys.

Dvoirys had been in Leeuwarden before and once he had thrown
his shoe through the tournament hall after a defeat. He always
came with a few companions and this time his companions had
told the Leeuwarden organizers that during a tournament in France,
a few weeks earlier, they had worried about Dvoirys, because they
had noticed that during the night he had disappeared. It was only
after a long search that they had found him, in the woods near a
hollow tree where every day he had been hiding food, picnicking in
the middle of night.

As long as Dvoirys was doing well in the tournament we noticed
nothing peculiar about him, but in the seventh round against
Bosboom he suffered the first of three consecutive defeats and in
despair he broke a block of chocolate in to little pieces, threw them 
all about and then went to collect them, searching under his own
and his neighbor's table. They were quite surprised when, in the
heat of battle, they suddenly found another player crawling under
their legs. "Gentlemen please, serious games in progress!" is the
traditional arbiter's call to order, but the arbiter was speechless and
anyway, his words would have been powerless.

After losing to Lobron in the last round, Dvoirys kneeled and beat
his head three times on the floor with great force. I did not see it,
for I was outside the building smoking a cigarette - yes,
Americans, the anti-smoking brigade has reached our shores, but in
defence of the rules committee it has to be said that we played in a
museum among paintings of seventeenth century masters - and I
barely saw how Dvoirys came hurrying out of the building at full
speed only missing hitting a wall of the Chancellery by sheer luck
before disappearing out of sight.

The chief organizer told us that once in Russia Dvoirys had beaten
his head until it bled with his opponent's queen that he had just
captured. "This is not quite true," said Russian grandmaster
Gleizerov. "It was a knight. The knight is very sharp in Russia. His
behavior has to be explained by the fact that he is a one hundred
percent chessplayer. Chess is his life.''

Just like everyone else, Lobron was a bit shaken by the incident,
but not really distraught by what his victory had done to Dvoirys.
He was satisfied with what he considered a fine game and in this
he was quite right.

White: Dvoirys Black: Lobron 
1. e2-e4 e7-e6 2. d2-d4 d7-d5 3. Nb1-d2 d5xe4 4. Nd2xe4 Nb8-d7
5. Ng1-f3 Ng8-f6 6. Ne4xf6+ Nd7xf6 7. c2-c3 c7-c5 8. Bc1-e3
Qd8-c7 9. Bf1-b5+ Bc8-d7 9. Bb5xd7+ Nf6xd7 11. d4-d5 The
only way to make it interesting, but later in the game black's pawn
majority will be more active than white's. 11...e6-e5 12. c3-c4
Bf8-d6 13. Qd1-c2 0-0 14. 0- 0 Ra8-e8 15. Nf3-g5 The beginning
of quite an unfortunate knight's tour. 15...Nd7-f6 16. Ra1-e1 h7-h6
17. Ng5-h3 e5-e4 18. g2-g3 Qc7- d7 19. Kg1-g2 Nf6-g4 20.
Nh3-g1 f7-f5 21. Be3-c1 f5-f4 22. Re1xe4 f4- f3+ 23. Ng1xf3
Qd7-f5 24. Nf3-d2 h6-h5 25. Qc2-b1 Bd6-e5 26. Re4-e2 Qf5-f7
27. h2-h3 (See Diagram) 27...Ng4-h2! 28. Kg2xh2 Be5xg3+ 29.
f2xg3 Re8xe2+ 30. Kh2-g1Re2-e1 31. Qb1-d3 Qf7-f2+ White
resigned.

The players who had the best reason to be satisfied with their
performance were Gleizerov and Ivan Sokolov, who tied for first,
and the Dutch player Manuel Bosboom, who shared third place
with Lobron, Speelman and Van Wely and made his first GM
norm. His time pressure scrambles were blood-curdling although in
most cases he came out on top. The next game was the prelude to
the chocolate incident.

White: Bosboom Black: Dvoirys 
1. c2-c4 e7-e5 2. Nb1-c3 Nb8-c6 3. g2-g3 g7-g6 4. Ra1-b1 Typical
for Bosboom, who follows his own paths. The common man
playing g3 will continue on the next move with Bg2. No such
mindless conformism for Bosboom. In another round, against
Yakovich in a similar opening set up, his Bg2 came hours after his
g3. 4...a7-a5 5. a2- a3 Bf8-g7 6. b2-b4 a5xb4 7. a3xb4 f7-f5 8.
b4-b5 Nc6-d4 9. Bc1-b2 Ng8-f6 10. Bf1-g2 10...0-0 11. d2-d3
d7-d6 12. e2-e3 Nd4-e6 13. Ng1-f3 f5-f4 14. e3xf4 e5xf4 15.
d3-d4 g6-g5 16. d4-d5 g5-g4 17. d5xe6 g4xf3 18. Qd1xf3 Bc8xe6
19. 0-0 f4xg3 20. h2xg3 Be6xc4 21. Rf1-d1 Ra8-b8 22. Nc3-e4
Bc4-a2 Black has won a pawn, but his kingside is somewhat shaky.
Now black forces a position with opposite colour bishops, in which
white's attacking chances improve. 23. Rb1-a1 Nf6xe4 24. Qf3xe4
Bg7xb2 25. Ra1xa2 Qd8-f6 And this costs an important pawn. 26.
Qe4- c2 Bb2-c3 27. Rd1-d3 Bc3-e5 28. Qc2xc7 Rf8-c8 29. Qc7-d7
Rc8-c1+ 30. Kg1-h2 Kg8-h8 31. Qd7-h3 Qf6-g6 32. Rd3-f3
Rc1-c5 33. Ra2-a4 Rb8-g8 34. Ra4-h4 Rc5-c7 35. Rf3-f5 (See
Diagram) 35...Rc7-f7 There was no good defence against the threat
of Be4 followed by Rfh5. 36. Bg2-e4 Rg8-g7 37. Rf5xe5 Black
resigned. 

This column first appeared in the Dutch newspaper
"NRC-Handelsblad" November 22, 1997. Copyright 1997 Hans Ree,
All Rights Reserved.