Dutch Treat
by Hans Ree

Down and Out on Your Own Street

The Lost Boys tournament in Amsterdam was held on the street
where I live and that was a strange experience. One should travel
for a tournament, preferably to a place far away where you
haven't been before.

How will it be, the city, the hotel and the playing room? And
who will take part? A bit of anxiety, but mainly pleasant
anticipation. At the start there are always a few minor problems,
the room is not right, you have a small quarrel, you move to
another place.

And then the first round, you don't feel quite settled yet, but
then, after just a few moves, there are only the problems on the
chess board and you know these are solvable if you sink into the
board deeply enough. You light a cigarette. All is well.

The cigarette shows that I am talking about the past, for
nowadays this essential pleasure is denied.

When the writer Martin Amis was asked why he occasionally
wrote interviews and worked as a reporter (for wasn't writing
novels a nobler craft than such humble journalistic work?) he
answered that writing non-fiction brought you out of the house.
The same with chess. It brought you outside and maybe that was
even more important than the joy of winning.

So it wasn't really right to play a tournament on one's own street,
but I had no choice. If I did''t participate, I would go to watch
every day and every time I would be tortured by remorse,
thinking that I should have been  playing instead of watching.

"And now it is the other way around, I suppose?" asked John van
der Wiel. "Yes, of course," I said, but that was only a joke, for I
was doing well in the tournament. I had won one game, drawn
with the redoubtable Mikhail Gurevitch and Jan Timman, and the
fear expressed by my wife that Jan and I would sink through the
stage due to our combined weights had not become true.

The next two rounds went badly and that too is interesting, for it
gives you self-knowledge. Defeat was a lot less painful than it
was in the past. That was nice in a way, but on the other hand
this was not quite as it should be either and I almost longed for
the real suffering of old times.

I hadn't played in a tournament for two years and I had slid back
into beginners' mistakes. In the first game I lost, I had been a bit
afraid of my opponent Tregubov and at the critical moment I had
lost my nerve, seeing phantom threats and thereby missing the
real one.

And the next day it was exactly the opposite. "How easily I am
winning this game, pity that it's not always like that," I mused
happily. No wonder that my next move was a horrible blunder
after which I could have resigned at once.

One could elaborate on this subject, but I won't, for originally
this article was written for my Dutch newspaper on the free day
of the tournament and I was convinced that it would bring bad
luck to twaddle oneself around to much.

I had still good hopes for the second part of the tournament, but
these were bitterly disappointed. It went from bad to worse and
all in all the tournament was a disaster for me, almost painful to
write about.

So let's move to a happier subject for a while.


A few years ago I had a small scoop in Dutch journalism when I
wrote that the Dutch director Marleen Gorris, winner of an
Academy Award for her film Antonia, was going to make a film
based on Vladimir Nabokov's novel The Defense. I had heard the
good news from Jon Speelman, who had been hired as chess
adviser.

For a long time it appeared as if this small piece of news was
bogus, for Marleen Gorris went on to make a quite different film
and nothing was heard of the Nabokov film. But it has been made
after all, The Luzhin Defence was shown last week at the
Edinburgh film festival and soon it will be released for regular
theatres.

The editor of British Chess Magazine was apparently privileged
with a preview, for in the August issue there was a review
(generally favorable) and the following diagram was printed (See
Diagram):


White: Kf3, Rc1, Nc3, Be2; pawns - a4, b3, f4, g2, h2
Black: Kf8, Re7, Bc5; pawns - a6, f7, g6, h7

White: Turati Black: Luzhin

In the film, this is the position (devised by Speelman, based on a
known study) where the decisive game for the World
Championship was adjourned. For reasons that will be known to
admirers of Nabokov, the game was not resumed. Black can win
by 1...Re7-e3+ 2. Kf3-g4 f7-f5+ 3. Kg4-g5 Kf8-g7 4. Nc3-d5
Re3-h3! 5. g2xh3 h7-h6+ 6. Kg5-h4 Bc5-f2 mate.

To come back to the Lost Boys tournament, my miserable play
does not blind me to the fact that it was quite a nice tournament.
Amsterdam had been a chess dessert for the last few years. This
year the aching gap was filled by the company Lost Boys ("in e-
commerce and multimedia projects") which had held a big chess
festival with about 500 participants in the Belgian city Antwerp
for the last seven years. This year the tournament was moved to
Amsterdam, the city of the company's headquarters.

Good for Amsterdam, a bad loss for Antwerp. It looked as if the
Belgians, angry at being deserted, were boycotting the new
Amsterdam tournament. Hundreds of Dutch chessplayers had
come to Antwerp every year, but in Amsterdam there were only
two Belgians, one of them being the ex-Russian Mikhail
Gurevich, who was specially invited.

He won the main section of the tournament together with Ivan
Sokolov and Pavel Tregubov (the recent European champion)
with 7 out of 9. Milov, Van der Sterren, Epishin, Nijboer and
Shchekachev shared fourth place with 6.5 points.

Here are some highlights from the first few rounds.

White: Van der Werf Black: Piket
1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2. c2-c4 e7-e6 3. Ng1-f3 d7-d5 4. Bc1-g5
d5xc4 5. Nb1-c3 Bf8-b4 6. e2-e3 b7-b5 7. a2-a4 c7-c6 8.
Nf3-d2 White had had this before, in Van der Werf-Bosman,
Dutch team competition 1994. Then followed 8...Bb7 9. axb5
Bxc3 10. bxc3 cxb5 11. Qb1, when White had good
compensation for the pawn and went on to win. 8...a7-a6 9.
a4xb5 c6xb5 10. Nc3xb5 a6xb5 A nice sacrifice of the exchange,
though Piket is not the first to have thought of it. 11. Ra1xa8
Bc8-b7 12. Bg5xf6 g7xf6 13. Ra8-a1 e6-e5 This position was
also reached in Hicker (rating 2095)-Haeusler (rating 1875),
Finkenstein Open 1994. Games between players with this kind of
rating used to remain unnoticed in the past, but not so in the
computer age. In that game from 1994 the meek 14. Be2 Lxg2
15. Rg1 Bb7 16. Kf1 was played. Black won. 14. Qd1-h5 Much
more agressive, but in this case too White will be in big trouble.
14...Nb8-c6 15. Ra1-d1 e5xd4 16. Qh5xb5 c4-c3 17. b2xc3
d4xc3 18. Qb5xb7 c3xd2+ 19. Ke1-e2 Qd8-d5 (See Diagram)

Opinions of computers and humans will greatly differ about this
position. The computer will count material, see that Black has no
clear way to get something done and come to the conclusion that
White is much better. Humans will see White in a terrible bind
and evaluate the position as winning for Black. This is the
exceptional case where truth lies in the middle. 20. Qb7-c8+
Ke8-e7 21. Qc8-c7+ Human or computer, everyone will see that
White is mated after 21. Qxh8 Qc4+. 21...Ke7-e6 22. Qc7-f4
Qd5-b5+ 23. Ke2-f3 Qb5-d5+ 24. Kf3-e2 Qd5-b5+ 25.
Ke2-f3 Nc6-e5+ 26. Kf3-g3 Rh8-g8+ 27. Kg3-h3 Amazing, the
things that White can suffer and survive. During the game Piket
always had the idea that there should be a way to mate the White
King, but neither then or during the post-mortem could he get
him. 27...Qb5-b7 28. e3e4 Ke6-e7 29. Bf1-e2 Qb7-c8+ 30.
Qf4-f5 Qc8-c3+ 31. g2-g3 Rg8-g5 32. Qf5-f4 Ne5-g6 33.
Qf4-e3 Qc3xe3 34. f2xe3 Rg5-e5 35. Be2-f3 Re5-c5 36. Rd1-b1
Bb4-a3 Draw. After 37. Rd1 Bc1 the pieces of wood on c1-d1-d2
are out of the game and with the rest of their material the players
can not threaten each other.

A Dutch youngster against Karpov's former second.

White: Berkvens Black: Epishin
1. e2-e4 c7-c5 2. Ng1-f3 e7-e6 3. d2-d4 c5xd4 4. Nf3xd4 a7-a6
5. Bf1-d3 Bf8-c5 6. Nd4-b3 Bc5-e7 7. 0-0 d7-d6 8. Qd1-g4
g7-g6 9. Qg4-e2 Nb8-d7 10. c2-c4 Ng8-f6 11. f2-f4 e6-e5 12.
f4-f5 g6xf5 13. Rf1xf5 Nd7-c5 14. Rf5-f1 Nc5xd3 15. Qe2xd3
b7-b5 16. Nb1-c3 b5xc4 17. Qd3xc4 Rh8-g8 18. Rf1xf6 Surely
not based on exact calculation but on positional feeling. White
gets an enduring attack for the exchange. 18...Be7xf6 19. Nc3-d5
Ke8-f8 20. Qc4-c6 Ra8-b8 21. Bc1-h6+ Bf6-g7 22. Bh6-g5
f7-f6 23. Bg5-e3 There is no quick decision. After 23. Rf1 Black
defends with 23...Bb7, and 23. Bxf6 Bxf6 24. Nxf6 Qxf6 25. Rf1
fails to 25...Rxg2+ 26. Kxg2 Bh3+ 23...Bc8-b7 24. Qc6-c4
Rb8-c8 25. Qc4-d3 Bg7-h8 26. Nd5-b6 Rc8-b8 27. Ra1-d1
Rg8-g4 28. Nb3-c5 Bb7xe4 29. Qd3-c4 29. Nbd7+ Kg8 30.
Qxd6 looks mighty strong. 29...Be4-f5 30. Qc4-f1 Bf5-c8 31.
Nb6xc8 Qd8xc8 32. Rd1xd6 Rb8xb2 33. Qf1-d3 Rg4xg2+ 34.
Kg1-f1 Rg2-c2 In a complicated position with time trouble for
both sides, Black slips. After 34...Qg4 White may have no more
than a draw by perpetual check. 35. Rd6-d8+ Kf8-f7 (See
Diagram)

36. Qd3-d5+ This does not yet spoil the game, but there was a
mate in 3 with 36. Qxh7+ 36...Kf7-g6 37. Rd8-g8+ But this
really does ruin it. There still was a mate in 9 with 37. Qg8+
(says the computer). 37...Bh8-g7 38. Qd5-d3+ Qc8-f5+ Alas,
that is the end of White's attack. White resigned.

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