Fargère wins Open Dutch Championship
François Fargère became the convincing winner at the Open Dutch Championship in Dieren. The Frenchman, who changed the FM for a GM title within one year, gave all credits to his trainer Iosif Dorfman. "He learnt me all the opening secrets." Report with videos.The Open Dutch Championship took place July 27-August 5 in Dieren, The Netherlands, where it has been held for decades. This year it was already the 42nd edition, with as always a strong Open as well as many lower groups and side events. For the first time yours truly was hired to make some videos and a few of them are embbed in this report. To start with, here's the video about the opening and first round (mainly in Dutch, but good to get an impression about this summer tournament).[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"219","attributes":{"class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","height":"349","width":"580","style":""}}]]Over 500 amauter players and a few professionals came to Dieren this year and many of them stay at the special “chess camping” on the complex of football club Gazelle Nieuwland. This is also where the traditional football tournament was held on Monday, with seven teams consisting of chess players and one team with players from the football club. This team won the tournament, but not as convincingly as François Fargère in the Dutch Open. The best chess players managed to hold the football players 1-1 in the final, and only lost with penalties:[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"220","attributes":{"class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","height":"349","width":"580","style":""}}]]As always, there was also a spot to be gained for the official 2011 Dutch Championship. Sipke Ernst finished as the best Dutchman in Dieren, but he was already qualified, and so normally the invitation would have gone to Erwin l'Ami, who had the better tiebreak over Robin Swinkels on SB points. However, l'Ami invited Swinkels to play for it, and so at the closing ceremony the two played a 2-game blitz match, which was won 2-0 by l'Ami. Perhaps these two games will be put on ChessVibes at a later stage - I'm lacking the time at this point.A bit surprisingly (especially for the locals) the first prize went to French GM François Fargère, a completely unknown name in The Netherlands. The 24-year-old works for Google France and trains a lot with France's most famous chess coach, Iosif Dorfman. The final video includes a small interview with Fargère, and also with GM Sipke Ernst, IM Krikor Mekhitarian, GM Valentin Iotov and GM Elshan Moradiabadi, who were the four players who drew within a few minutes at boards 2 and 3 in the final round (and explain why).[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"221","attributes":{"class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","height":"349","width":"580","style":""}}]]
In the game viewer below you'll find fragments from the tournament with brief annotations by press officer Peter Boel, translated from the tournament website.
Game fragments
Game viewer by ChessTempo
The playing hall (Sports Center Theothorne in Dieren, The Netherlands)
Some empty boards waiting for smaller tournaments to be held later in the week
The Open Dutch remains very popular among amateurs
A daily puzzle by our editor IM Yochanan Afek
The Open group in a separate section in the playing hall
Erika Sziva of De Beste Zet selling books - we still mis her husband IM Johan van Mil, who passed away in November 2008, deeply
The playing hall was decorated with chess pieces everywhere
Concentration
GM Robin Swinkels
GM Yge Visser
IM Thorsten Michael Haub
IM Roeland Pruijssers
GM Erwin l'Ami, who won in Dieren last year
GM Valentin Iotov
GM Vyacheslav Ikonnikov
GM Sipke Ernst
GM Elshan Moradiabadi
GM Sebastian Siebrecht
IM Yochanan Afek
IM Daan Brandenburg
IM Leonid Milov
FM Migchiel de Jong
And the winner... GM François Fargère
Links
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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