ELDI Snelschaak Marathon
in Mercure Hotel Dordrecht

 
A special report by GM Mikhail Golubev
(Chess Today-835, 20th February 2003)

ON 15 February 2003 I participated in the famous, and at the same time unusual tournament - Open Dutch Blitzchess Marathon, or ELDI Snelschaak Marathon, named after the new tournament main sponsor, ELDI Chemicals. 200 players competed in 17 double rounds (i.e. we played two games against each opponent in each of the 17 rounds - 34 games overall).

The Dordrecht Marathon always has a strong list of participants including mainly, but not only, the strongest Dutch players. The previous winners were Piket (1996, 2002), Van Wely (1998, 2000), Kir.Georgiev (1997), Vaganian (1999), Lautier (2001). The first prize in 2003 was as high as 1600 euros, not bad for some 9 hours of work even for a top grandmaster. Taking into account the strong competition from Aeroflot, several possible participants, including Van Wely and Lautier, were absent. Even so there were many famous players competing. The top 10 players were I.Sokolov, J.Piket, P.Nikolic, Y.Seirawan, M.Sadler, U.Andersson, J.Timman, J.Speelman, D.Fridman, F.Nijboer, and were several other GMs including A.Barsov, P.Popovic, D.de Vreugt, J.Gdanski, V.Gurevich and myself.

The tournament battle was quite exciting, participants showed many great ideas, silly blunders, and unpredictable results. The tournament favourite GM Ivan Sokolov made a draw in the first round against an opponent more than 700 ELO points lower! Many club players are quite dangerous in blitz. Also I twice finished mini-matches against 1900+ players with a 1,5-0,5 score. Yasser Seirawan was on the top board more often than anyone. On this board the games were transmitted for the spectators onto a large display. He won his first 5 matches with a score 2-0, and Jan Timman, Ivan Sokolov and Jeroen Piket played less successfully, but close to the very end Sokolov reached the leaders. Everything was finally decided in the very last round, before which Seirawan was sole leader with a half point margin. Follower Sokolov and Timman won their matches with a 2-0 score, while Seirawan scored only 1,5. So, three players shared the first place. The Buchgolz system defined the following order of winners:

The final results: 1. I.Sokolov 2. Timman 3. Seirawan (all 25) 4. de Vreugt (23) 5. Nikolic 6. Bosboom. 7. Andersson 8. Popovic (all 22,5) 9. Speelman 10. V.Gurevich 11. Solomunovic (all 22) 12. Piket 13. Smeets 14. Fridman 15. Nijboer 16. Sadler 17. Solleveld 18. Mohr 19. Cekro (all 21,5).

Having 21 points, I shared 20th place with four other players, having the best Buchgolz in the group. The latter fact is not surprising, because I finished with 0,5/4 in the two last rounds, losing 0-2 to Seirawan, and then 0,5-1,5 to Piket. Before that, my results against the top 19 players were not disastrous: 2-0 vs. Nijboer, 1,5-0,5 vs. Popovic, Solomunovic and Mohr, 1-1 vs. de Vreugt, Bosboom and Gurevich, and 0,5-1,5 vs. Fridman.

Despite an unimpressive personal result, I should say that the tournament was absolutely wonderful. Together with six main organizers, there were 19 other arbiters who worked on the tournament; therefore it is not surprising that rounds started in accordance with the previously published schedule. The pleasant and spacious tournament venue was provided by the luxurious Mercure hotel, which is also one of the event sponsors. In the playing hall, the pairings were automatically shown on several big screens. It was no problem to eat and drink in the tournament buffet even between rounds, but there was also the main hotel restaurant and even a McDonalds, situated some 100m away from the Mercure hotel. The media were present throughout the whole of the tournament. Organizers put every possible effort into helping invited foreign players find a hotel - this resulted in the fact that I didn't even see the town of Dordrecht, because it was not necessary for me to leave the hotel. But I was very happy to see such a tournament. Chess organizers in other countries who plan to put on something similar can be strongly advised to visit one of the next Open Dutch Blitzchess Marathon, to see how it's done in Dordrecht.

In this issue's CBV file I provide first board games (source - the tournament site blitzchess.nl), and also some of the relatively more sensible of my games that I was able to reconstruct after the tournament end. Apart from the event site, nice reports with photos are available at chessbase.com and schakers.info.

Dordrecht 2003 games (CBV file)

[Edited by Graham Brown. Photos: thanks to www.blitzchess.nl; Adri Timmermans.]