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His name will live forever… |
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Written by Peter Boel
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Thursday, 16 August 2007 |
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Chairman Eric de Winter of the Euwe Stimulus tournament committee recounted that four and a half months ago this event was still a sparkle in his eye. ‘It was actually supposed to be held in the west of The Netherlands, but that didn’t work out. Then we looked if we could organize it in this region and with the help of the Wille brothers things started to work.’The Wille-Euwe connection has some special connotations with this tournament. De Winter himself was introduced to chess when he met father Henk Wille, who was chairman of the Dutch Chess Federation in his time. This happened during a tournament that was held in honour of Max Euwe’s 75th birthday in 1976, where Fridrik Olafsson was one of the participants.De Winter especially welcomed Els Euwe en Fietie Brouwer-Euwe, the two daughters of the former World Champion and chairman of the FIDE as well as the great inspirator of all kinds of tournaments, of which the event at hand is the youngest: ‘His name will live forever.’After thanking the sponsors and other parties involved, De Winter gave the floor to the representative of the municipality of Arnhem. The Councillor of Sports, Mrs. Rita Weeda, welcomed everyone present on behalf of her municipality. ‘This is a very special event where players from all over the world meet, as well as men and women and young and old’, she said in English. ‘And such a mixed company is entirely in the spirit of Max Euwe, who so enthusiastically pursued the idea of propagating chess everywhere.’ She expressed her happiness about this international chess event, the first in eight years in Arnhem – the last time was in the Sonsbeekpark in the centre of the city, with the four players Viktor Kortchnoi, Matthew Sadler, Xie Jun and Friso Nijboer. ‘This has been achieved thanks to a good cooperation between the local clubs ASV and VSV. I also like the idea of the regional group, where five young players can gain experience against more routined opponents. All this in our city of Arnhem, one of the finest in The Netherlands.’Mrs Weeda concluded with Euwe’s old adage ‘It is easier to reach a winning position than to actually win it.’ We might interpret this as an encouragement for the tournament committee and the players: we have reached a good position, now the job needs to be finished properly. And that is something we will see in the coming days. Shortly before the drawing of lots, Eric de Winter and his wife Ria van Doorn had discovered to their horror that they had forgotten to include one continent in their invitation policy: Antarctica. After many deliberations a toy penguin agreed to participate, but it turned out not to know the moves, and so it was given the fictitious no. 11.Regarding the procedure, the thought had arisen to make the participants dive in the river Rhine to pick up their numbers from the bottom, but at the moment the level of the Rhine is too high for such adventures! Therefore a traditional local souvenir was chosen: a can of ‘Arnhemse Meisjes’ (Girls of Arnhem) for each with the numbers underneath. This procedure yielded the following results: Main Group - Fridrik Olafsson
- Bianca Muhren
- Helgi Dam Ziska
- Dibyendu Barua
- Puchen Wang
- Amon Simutowe
- Vincent Rothuis
- Willy Hendriks
- Oscar Panno
- Nona Gaprindashvili
Pairings for Round 1: Olafsson - Gaprindashvili Muhren - Panno Ziska - Hendriks Barua - Rothuis Wang - Simutowe Regional Group - Wouter van Rijn
- Anton van Rijn
- Leon van Tol
- Arjen van Herwaarden
- Guust Homs
- Erik van den Dikkenberg
- Bram van der Velden
- Tom Meurs
- Mark Haast
- Lars Ootes
Pairings for Round 1:W. van Rijn - Ootes A. van Rijn - Haast Van Tol - Meurs Van Herwaarden - Van der Velden Homs - Van den Dikkenberg
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