Corus Chess 2008: Many a Handshake in Wijk aan Zee - KWA Members Meet ...

A photo report on the visit of Wijk on 19/20 January 2008

A small delegation from Germany made a trip to this year’s Corus tournament too - Michael Negele, Bernd Schneider and Ralf Binnewirtz were in on it.

In mild outdoor temperature and wet windy weather a snapshot on the short way from the tournament hall "De Moriaan" to the Corus Pavilion (white "building" in the background).

On this way you inevitably pass the Café de Zon, a chess pub with a real local flavour which is also equipped with a billiard table and with darts. Here we had planned a first meeting with Bert Corneth and Guy van Habberney.

Our treasurers arrived a bit late, after all the informal board meeting then took place in the Corus Pavilion – as documented in the next picture.

Bert Corneth, Michael Negele and Guy van Habberney – a central point was the takeover of the business by the new treasurer, but some other important decisions were on the agenda as well.

After our arrival at Wijk Bernd Schneider was just in time to enrol for the rapid tournament which was held for the first time in the Pavilion on both afternoons of this weekend. Guy van Habberney and Ralf Binnewirtz are kibitzing a little.

Back to the tournament hall where the tournaments A, B and C, the Honorary of the seniors as well as the extensive open attracted numerous spectators. Once again Dolf Vos sounded the bell for the Saturday round with a short welcoming speech.

There was a joyful hello when we spotted our member Øystein Brekke from the country of the trolls among the present chess journalists.

But we found the largely non-appearance of our Dutch members at this excellent chess event in their own country a little regrettable.

Like last year the message of the decoration couldn’t be overlooked – more than ever the electronic brains have chess firmly under control.

Peak period in the tournament hall: The crowd of visitors caused a noticeable increase of the indoor temperature, furthermore the tournament air was piquantly enriched by vapours of hot pea soup moving over from the catering corner.

The reigning world champion was on the way up, on Saturday he could make his first full point against a Judith Polgar in poor form, and there should follow a convincing win over Topalov on Sunday.

One of the old chess legends taking part in the Honorary – Lajos Portisch looks critically at Michael Adams’ game. But this day he couldn’t avoid a defeat against the irrepressible Kortschnoi.

Aronian vs Radjabov was another top duel, the former decided this positional game in his favour.

Further impressions of the tournaments are recorded in this picture gallery.

Parallel to the tournament events selected games were "dissected" in the large analysis room of the Pavilion, here GM Genna Sosonko is just on the job.

It was nice that we could make out a KWA member among the participants of the open: like one year ago Alain Fayard had taken the trip from Paris to Wijk.

A little further to the north - in Egmond aan Zee - we had found hotel accommodations which turned out to be quite convincing, just as the fine local gastronomy.

A symbol of the town is the lighthouse J.C.J. van Speijk from the year 1834 towering above all.

Sunday morning on the beach of Egmond - Bernd Schneider and Ralf Binnewirtz are exposed here to a very stiff breeze.

Back in Wijk, on the advanced Sunday morning we had a
meeting with Peter de Jong where we talked about his contribution
to the big Emanuel Lasker biography.

Again the book stands were attractive for collectors, on Sunday we could go hunting for bargains at the antiquarian Mulder Boekenvreugd (from Zutphen). In the meantime another Dutch KWA member had
joined us, Ton de Vreede (on the left) immediately presented
us his nice club magazine (see below).

Ton de Vreede is one of the two editors in chief of this half-yearly club magazine which even contains a series of articles in colour print (about chess stamps). Especially valuable are the historical games dug up by Ton de Vreede and published here for the first time.
Former issues of the magazine can be downloaded from the club homepage (as pdf-files).

The obligatory group photo on Sunday afternoon:
Michael Negele, Ralf Binnewirtz, Ton de Vreede, Øystein Brekke
and Peter de Jong. At that time Bernd Schneider
was still playing his last rapid game ...

The unchallenged victory in the rapid tournament went to Bernd Schneider (scoring 6.5 out of 7), after the vigorously applauded presentation ceremony he gave us a demonstration of his win from the last round.

A last photo in the late afternoon just before driving back: Ralf Binnewirtz and Alain Fayard in front of the tournament hall.

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