Dutch Treat 
by Hans Ree

Angry Boss

Never inclined to contentedly polish his trophies, Gary Kasparov is
still angry about what happened at the Corus tournament in Wijk
aan Zee, and in an interview on his website
www.kasparovchess.com he spouts his grievances.

Apparently everybody had been against him. The organizers were
ever so sorry, mournful and even "distraught with grief" whenever
he won a game. For his second Yury Dohoian it had been
especially painful to visit the press room, where everybody wanted
his master to lose. Spectators were conned by the commentators
into awarding the daily "prize of the public" to undeserving others
and not to Kasparov. Strangers had been allowed on the stage and
the journalist John Henderson had been seen snatching food and
drinks from a back room restricted to the players.

In order to give everyone the chance to form one's own judgement
on the injustice done to him, Kasparov has put on his website once
again all games that won a spectator's prize at Wijk aan Zee, plus
his own wins for comparison. 

Last year Kasparov was furious at the Spanish organizers from
Leon who had used the words "completely unacceptable" in one of
their letters. In vain they tried to make him swallow the - indeed
improbable - notion that these words have a different and more
gentle emotional color in Spanish. At the time it seemed that the
whole of Spain would be stricken from Kasparov's list. Now
Holland trembles at his wrath.

And one imagines a future meeting of World Champions in
Heaven, where they exchange notes on their earthly tribulations.
"It's the Jews that did it!" says one. "Oh no, it's the Dutch from
Wijk aan Zee!" says another. "Don't we all know that in fact it was
the bicyclists?" adds a third one.

Kasparov's new website is a bit chaotically organized, but it
certainly has a lot to offer. As a kind of inauguration party there
was an Internet tournament in which Kasparov himself
participated.

Though Khalifman thinks that Internet tournaments are the wave of
the future, most chessplayers consider them a meager substitute for
ordinary tournaments. This however did not prevent a strong field
from taking part. The prize fund (first prize $20,000) was attractive
and most of the players had no other obligations anyway. Only
Adams and Seirawan, who played a match in Bermuda, had to play
their games in Kasparov's tournament, in between their match
games.

It seems that technology is not yet up to the expectations of Internet
devotees. Connections were often lost, most dramatically during
the match between Adams and the Israeli computer Deep Junior.
Deep Junior had convincingly beaten Illescas 2-0. In its first game
against Adams, the Thing was winning with black when the
connection was lost. The game was then declared drawn and when
a connection could not be re-established in time for the second
game, that game was declared a forfeit for Deep Junior.
Undefeated without really having conceded one draw, Deep Junior
may be considered the moral winner of tournament, a feat,
however, that has never consoled one human, let alone a computer.

Another problem not experienced in ordinary tournaments is the
time lag between opponents. The Indonesian Adianto, playing in a
Jakarta hotel, was eliminated around four a.m. by Nigel Short, who
was playing at a much more convenient time of day in Greece.

The Dutch competitors were Loek van Wely and Jeroen Piket. In
the first round, Van Wely beat Ivan Sokolov, whose mind may
have been elsewhere, in fact in a different room of his apartment,
where his girlfriend was expecting labor pains that were to begin
any day. 

In the next round Van Wely was eliminated by Kasparov.

Jeroen Piket was well-prepared for his first match against Yasser
Seirawan. He had sent his children out of the house and invited his
brother Marcel, a strong chess player himself, for moral support.

Representatives of kasparovchess.com were supervising the players
to see that they would not consult books, chess playing programs
or human advisers. In the case of Piket, the supervising was done
by the Dutch player Jan van de Mortel, who has been described on
kasparovchess.com as their "regional manager for the Netherlands
and Belgium".

Working for Kasparov is said to have the advantage of receiving a
decent salary, but it certainly requires one to have an elephant's
skin. During the Wijk aan Zee tournament, Van de Mortel had
written a report on kasparovchess.com in which he had implied
that Kasparov had stood badly in his game against Judit Polgar.
Now on the same website he is severely reprimanded for this by the
Boss himself, in the aforementioned interview.

Piket first eliminated Seirawan. Then the great Alexander
Morozevich, though only with a lot of effort. The first two games,
with one hour thinking time per player for the whole game, were
both drawn. Then there were two blitz games. Piket lost the first
one with white, but managed to equalize the score in the second
game. In the next series of two blitz games he won twice.

Morozevich was quoted saying that he had known in advance that,
were it to come to a blitz tie- break, he would be clumsy with the
mouse and lose. This seems strange, because he has gathered quite
a lot of experience on the Internet Chess Club.

Those who wanted to follow the games live on kasparovchess.com
had to register as members. I hesitated briefly. Would the Boss be
as severe to ordinary members as he was to his regional managers?
He wouldn't, would he? So I overcame my doubts and registered,
because I wanted to follow our man Jeroen Piket as closely as
possible.

Friday last week Piket eliminated Peter Svidler, who seemed so
shocked when he hadn't been able to convert a two-pawn
advantage to a win in the first game, that he wasn't able to put up
decent resistance in the second game.

A day earlier Kasparov had beaten Adams and so the final
Kasparov-Piket was scheduled for Saturday.

Friday evening a group of Dutch chessplayers gathered in a hotel
near Rotterdam. The next day we would spread over the
municipalities in the Rotterdam harbour area, give a lecture and a
simul, and then join each other again for a blitz tournament.

Late at night Jeroen Piket checked into the hotel. He had just
beaten Peter Svidler, which meant that next day he would have to
meet Kasparov in the finals of the Internet tournament. He
wouldn't be able to play in our blitz tournament, but he would give
his lecture and simul on Saturday morning.

Piket was quite jubilant, showed us his games against Svidler and
asked Timman for advice on a variation of the Scotch that
Kasparov might choose.

The mood was good, maybe too good. We lost our sense of time.
Many empty wine bottles later we found that it was 3 a.m. and we
broke up our meeting. 

Piket had gathered an impressive wine bill. In five hours he would
have to wake up for breakfast, then drive to another town in the
neigbourhood to give his lecture and simul and immediately
afterwards he would have to face Kasparov. Didn't he take his great
opponent a bit too lightly? "Megalomania is fatal for Piket",
Kasparov had said in the interview, commenting on Piket's results
in Wijk aan Zee.

But on Saturday again something went wrong with the Internet
connection. The first game between Kasparov and Piket was
broken off after 18 moves in a normal position of the Ruy Lopez,
Breyer variation. Later the game was declared invalid and the finals
were postponed to Sunday.

On that day Piket saved himself with a draw in the first game from
what looked like a very precarious position (and indeed Piket later
admitted that he had been lost) and in the second game he won an
ending that Kasparov should have held. If megalomania had been a
side effect of his euphoria after beating Svidler, apparently it had
worn off by Sunday, when he was his sober self again.

White: Kasparov Black: Piket, Finals, first game. 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2.
Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-b5 a7-a6 4. Bb5-a4 Ng8-f6 5. 0-0 Bf8-e7 6.
Rf1-e1 b7-b5 7. Ba4-b3 d7-d6 8. c2-c3 0-0 9. h2-h3 Nc6-a5 10.
Bb3-c2 c7-c5 11. d2-d4 Qd8-c7 12. Nb1-d2 Bc8-d7 13. Nd2-f1
c5xd4 14. c3xd4 Ra8-c8 15. Nf1-e3 Na5-c6 16. d4-d5 Nc6-b4 17.
Bc2-b1 a6-a5 18. a2-a3 Nb4-a6 19. b2-b4 Rc8-a8 20. Bc1-d2
Rf8-c8 21. Bb1-d3 Qc7-b7 22. g2-g4 g7-g6 23. Ne3-f1 a5xb4 24.
a3xb4 Be7-d8 25. Nf1-g3 Na6-c7 26. Qd1-e2 Ra8xa1 27. Re1xa1
Rc8-a8 28. Qe2-e1 Nf6-e8 29. Qe1-c1 Ne8-g7 30. Ra1xa8 Qb7xa8
31. Bd2-h6 Nc7-e8 32. Qc1-b2 Qa8-a4 33. Kg1-g2 Bd8-b6 34.
Bd3-c2 Qa4-a7 35. Bc2-d3 Qa7-a4 36. Ng3-e2 Ne8-c7 37. Nf3xe5
d6xe5 38. Qb2xe5 Nc7-e8 39. Bh6xg7 Qa4-d1 40. Bg7-h6 Qd1xd3
41. Qe5-e7 Ne8-g7 42. Ne2-g3 Qd3-c2 43. Qe7-f6 (See Diagram)

43...Ng7-f5 44. Qf6xb6 Nf5-h4+ 45. Kg2-h2 Nh4-f3+ 46. Kh2-g2
Nf3-h4+ 47. Kg2-h2 Nh4-f3+ 48. Kh2-g2 Nf3-h4+ 49. Kg2-h2
Draw

White: Piket Black: Kasparov, Finals, second game 1. Ng1-f3
Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 c7-c5 3. Nb1-c3 d7-d5 4. c4xd5 Nf6xd5 5. g2-g3
Nb8-c6 6. Bf1-g2 Nd5-c7 7. d2-d3 e7-e5 8. 0-0 Bf8-e7 9. Nf3-d2
Bc8-d7 10. Nd2-c4 0-0 11. Bg2xc6 Bd7xc6 12. Nc4xe5 Bc6-e8 13.
Qd1-b3 Be7-f6 14. Ne5-g4 Bf6-d4 15. e2-e3 Bd4xc3 16. Qb3xc3
b7-b6 17. f2-f3 Be8-b5 18. Ng4-f2 Qd8-d7 19. e3-e4 Nc7-e6 20.
Bc1-e3 a7-a5 21. Ra1-d1 Ra8-d8 22. Rd1-d2 Qd7-c6 23. Rf1-c1
Qc6-b7 24. a2-a3 Ne6-d4 25. Kg1-g2 Rd8-c8 26. Rc1-B1 Rf8-d8
27. Be3xd4 Rd8xd4 28. b2-b4 a5xb4 29. a3xb4 Qb7-d7 30. b4xc5
b6xc5 31. Rb1-b2 h7-h6 32. Rb2-a2 Kg8-h7 33. Ra2-a5 Rc8-d8
34. Qc3xc5 Bb5xd3 35. Rd2xd3 Rd4xd3 36. Nf2xd3 Qd7xd3 37.
Ra5-a2 Qd3-b3 38. Qc5-c2 Qb3xc2+ 39. Ra2xc2 h6-h5 40. f3-f4
g7-g6 41. e4-e5 (See Diagram)

41...Rd8-d3 42. Kg2-h3 Rd3-e3 43. Kh3-h4 Kh7-g7 44. Kh4-g5
Re3-e1 45. Rc2-c7 Re1-e2 46. Rc7-e7 Re2-a2 47. f4-f5 g6xf5 48.
e5-e6 h5-h4 49. Re7xf7+ Kg7-g8 50. Kg5-f6 Black resigned

This column first appeared, in part, in the Dutch newspaper
"NRC-Handelsblad" February 19, 2000. Copyright 2000 Hans Ree,
All Rights Reserved.