Liu Guanchu vs. Mikhail Ulybin (courtesy Jan van Os)

Group A

In a sideline of the Tarrasch variation of the French (9.Nf4) Ulybin playing black had a bishop and pawn for a rook, but with compensation due to his central pawns. A dynamic opening with chances for both sides. Liu played a new move with 17.Bd2, which made Ulybin think for half an hour to come up with a response. Having a huge time advantage Liu then kept the position complicated with 21.Qg3. Swapping queens didn't help as the endgame was still difficult. Under time pressure Ulybin pushed his e-pawn to the third rank instead of holding on to his b-pawn a bit longer. This move didn't pose any real danger to White's king and weakened his pawn on d3, which was soon eliminated meaning it was all over.

On the second board, Lucas van Foreest opted for a placid Petroff against his trainer Sergei Tiviakov, but had a hard time keeping the balance against Tiviakov's principled play. The lost b-pawn was never compensated and Sergei didn't have any problems converting.

Evgeny Gleizerov - Rui Gao on board three was a rather uneventful Grünfeld. White didn't achieve much from the opening, and the peace was signed after 27 moves.

GM Maksim Chigaev was an attractive straightforward game after FM Hing Ting Lai made a strategically unsound move with 17.Ne1?! Resignation as soon as move 22. We will post an extensive annotation of this game by FM Grigori Kodentsov shortly.

Maksim Chigaev (courtesy Harry Gielen)

 

Peter Ypma (2260) won a very nice game against FM Max Warmerdam (2347) out of an unusual opening:

 

All games from group A:

 

Group B

In the clash between the leaders Edim Salihbegovic and Joan Reinders the first player got his preparation on the board in an English. He exchanged his bishop for a knight on c6 to damage Black's pawn structure and swapped Black's active dark squared bishop which gave him a pleasant position. He kept his advantage and outplayed his opponent in the following rook endgame.

Fons van Hamond had the black pieces in a long positional game against Lucien Jerphanion. Showing more stamina in the endgame that should objectively be drawn, Van Hamond with some skilled maneuvering finally found a way into White's position to grab the point.

No one from the other players with 2.5 points managed to win their games (including a draw between the higher rated Minko Pieters and Arthur Maters) apart from Onno Elgersma who won against Jeffrey ten Velde. That means that following Salihbegovic in second place are now Van Hamond and Elgersma.

Student Chess Tournament

A new event this year is the Student Chess Tournament. The idea of this tournament is to attract players who are not (yet) member of a chess club and have no or little experience. Ten enthousiastic students enrolled to play five rapid games. There was a nice prize fund available (1st prize 150, 2nd 75, 3rd 50 euros), and participation was free. The level of play was quite high (many players had played quite a bit online). Winner with a 100% score was Arno Holtrop, followed by Adriaan Boer with 4/5. Jan Willem van der Graaf, Oscar Delicaat and Freddrick van der Meer shared third place. The prize for the best scoring student association (120 euros) was shared between FMF (Computer Science, Math, Mechanics, Astronomy and Physics) and HCSA (The Honours College Social Association).

Arno Holtrop (left) receiving his prize from tournament director Koen Lambrechts

 

Games of the day round 3

The jury has chosen the following winners for the most beautiful games from round 3: Minko Pieters who won against Anna Martinez, and Marline Waardenburg who won against Thomas Moerman (both from group B).