Wijk aan Zee on "WC-Day"

– and "no sign" of Topalov – Kramnik ...

(A more witty short report by M.N.)

After a pleasant stay in the house Corneth the evening before our kind Bert is storming under a blue sky – past the fluttering flags – from the car park near the "Corus pavilion" to the "small place of the event", the tournament hall "De Moriaan".

Time for the obligatory photo in front of the again very futuristic tournament poster was a must – chess under control of the robot.

After all there were three book tables in the foyer – eldorado of each collector – our member Frans Hoynck van Papendrecht – employee of the bookshop van Stockum in The Hague – had "amply set" his.

Then we were very crowded – the match of the opponents from Elista didn’t take place in the rest room but in the middle of this cluster – of photographers of course! But I couldn’t make out a Danailov with worn glasses sucking his thumb, just as there was no LAN cable hanging down from the ceiling ...

... Radjabov and Motylev appeared completely unimpressed while opening their exciting King’s Indian.

At a little more distance the view of the A and the B group of the grandmaster tournament was not better as well, but among the "decathletes" I located a good old friend of our meetings in Amsterdam and in La Tour-de-Peilz ...

... Alain Fayard from Paris just carefully writing down his fifth move, unfortunately the KWA fans hadn’t brought him much luck in this game.

As this time we didn’t succeed in taking photos of the superstars, here some impressions of the C group ...

... where the young star with the unpronounceable name Nepomniachtchi let himself catch still in the last round by the Polish ex-champion Krasenkow.

The young Russian was defeated without great ado by a pretty young lady named Kosintseva, maybe he had looked too much to the B group out of the corner of his eye and then had seen his opponent double ...

You will find further photo reports on the Corus tournament at ChessBase and at Gerhard Hund's Website.

In the analysis room (tent) was intense activity too – and with Hans Ree and Robert Hübner two "old stars" of the Hoogoven tournaments had been mustered: after all Hübner still participated last in 1996, Ree even in 1986. The commentators were greeted and introduced by Dolf Vos, the leader of the organization committee. Hübner & Ree commenting the games

Our strongest master after Emanuel Lasker was very convincing by his excellent knowledge of Dutch, but also by the precise analysis of the quickly ruined game van Wely – Svidler – it’s hardly believable how the "hero of Friday" was "killed" on Saturday.

Naturally Jurgen Stigter was not able to resist the new magazine "Matten" by Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, Allard Hoogland and Rob van Vuure – you can follow the chess stories with the ambiguous title (to mate and to thrash - meaning the same now and then) even with a poor knowledge of Dutch – but watch out! - there are no games and not a single diagram.

As the grandmasters were still closely surrounded at this time, I had a look around the tournament pub "Cafe De Zon" among the true chess lovers ...

After all at about 6 pm still some snapshots of the A and B tournament – unfortunately without flash and therefore more blurred ...

... just before Topalov let Kramnik have his last pawn, then agreed to a draw without a handshake, shortly afterwards the tournament hall emptied.

T. Kosintseva is still brooding over the board.

We, Bernd Schneider, my kind drivers and Jurgen Stigter were driven now to the "Horse Club" where a sumptuous dinner rounded off a successful short trip – till 2008 when again "Corus" or then even "Tata" will call for Wijk aan Zee.