Fridman wins Dutch Lightning Title

Germany's strongest grandmaster Daniel Fridman is not a bad blitz lightning player either. Last week he won the Open Dutch Lightning Championships and lots of spectacular videos were recorded.

The 6th Open Dutch Lightning Chess Championship was held on Saturday, June 21st, but we wanted to wait for the videos before publishing this article. Two years ago this tournament was kind of an eye-opener for me as far as chess videos are concerned: just for fun I recorded a few on a Nikon Coolpix photo camera and everybody loved to watch it.

Unfortunately I couldn't attend the last two editions but the good news is that the organizers recorded many games themselves. You'll find a few videos at the end of this article.

The winner was Daniel Fridman. After finished shared first with Hungarian IM Gyula Iszak in the final group, Fridman needed six tiebreak games to win the cup. He succeeded Floris van Assendelft, who finished shared fifth with IM Manuel Bosboom - both of them former winners.




Among the 152 participants was GM Loek van Wely, who had returned from the Ukraine shortly before. First seeded, KingLoek couldn't live up the expectations: after the first 28 games (oops, did we mention lightning chess means just two minutes on the clock?) he didn't have enough points to qualify for the top final group, consisting of 18 players.

It was an exciting final. After 8 rounds, IM Gyula Iszak and local (Apeldoorn) hero Stefan Kuipers were leading. Closer to the end, the favorites appeared on top of the standings and in the end, Daniel Fridman and Gyula Iszak had collected 14 points out of 17 games. This meant a 2.5-point gap with IMs Merijn van Delft and Ekrem Cekro.




The first tiebreak game was won by Fridman, but then Iszak levelled the score impressively. The Hungarian also won the third game, but then it was Fridman's turn to fight back. After winning both game five and six, the thrilling final and a successful tournament came to an end.

Lots of spectators watching the tiebreak final


Below there are videos of the final; more videos, photos and results can be found at the tournament website.

Tiebreak games 1 & 2 between GM Daniel Fridman & IM Gyula Iszak
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Tiebreak games 3 & 4 between GM Daniel Fridman & IM Gyula Iszak
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Tiebreak games 5 & 6 between GM Daniel Fridman & IM Gyula Iszak
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