Always when I walked the stairs of the Beverwijk railway station together with my colleague the Dutch IM Rob Hartoch (1947-2009), on our way to the tournament that under different names had existed since 1938, Rob enjoyed speculating about how many times we had gone up and down those stairs in our lives.
I had a head start because I was a few years older. He couldn’t make up about that because he died early. When I googled to find when exactly that was, I saw photos of him with a broad, friendly smile. I don’t know any chess player who is so often depicted smiling as generously as Rob.
Over many years, altogether I spent more than a year at the tournament that is now called Tata, first as a player and later as a reporter. In 1968, the tournament moved from Beverwijk to Wijk aan Zee and of course I moved with it. By that time, I was competing in the main group, then called the Grandmaster Group.
The 88th edition was played this year from January 17 to 31. Both the main group, the Masters, and the second one, the Challengers, were tournaments of youth. The Masters had an unprecedented average age of only 23 and the oldest participant there was the Dutch Anish Giri, 31 years old. Youngest was the Turkish grandmaster Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, 14 years old.
Magnus Carlsen has called Erdogmus the best 14-year-old player that the world has ever seen. A remarkable statement, as Magnus himself was quite strong when he was fourteen, but apparently he has a higher opinion of Erdogmus.
Some people think that the Argentine Faustino Oro, twelve years old, is an even greater talent. He played in the Challengers group and with a score of 7 out of 13 he finished ahead of many seasoned grandmasters.
For many years, Fiona Steil-Antoni, who is a women’s international master from Luxembourg, has been conducting short interviews with players after their games for the Tata tournament website. As far as I can remember, it was never with players who had just lost their games. Interviewing the losers would be too cruel and Tata is a civilized tournament.
After the eighth round, in which Anish Giri defeated the leader Nodirbek Abdussatorov, she asked Giri how far his opening preparation had gone. His answer was hard to understand: “My prep basically never started and never ended. I am my prep; it’s just me. You have to understand, prep is not like some device somewhere, far away from you... It’s like when you’re going to the battle, you have to wear your armor. Of course, if I come out naked, then these guys will eat me alive, so I’m coming with my armor, but then it’s just me.”
Because Giri is known for his superb opening preparation, and I was keen to learn something, I tried to understand his oracular language. Never started, never ended, armor, come out naked... I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. But a while later in the interview, Anish suddenly came back to the topic and said that actually he had not wanted to reveal the extent of his opening preparation and had therefore just made up some nonsense.
Was that a disappointment for the eager student that I was? Not quite. I was reminded of a conversation I once had with the Dutch writer Willem Frederik Hermans who had been my literary hero since my youth. It was in the garden of his house in Brussels. He asked some questions about the chess world, and I enthusiastically answered them, as I always enjoyed talking about chess. Then suddenly he said, “You have to understand that I’m not really interested in this at all, and I’m asking only out of politeness.”
Was that a disappointment? In a sense, yes, but on the other hand, I was touched by his candor. I had seen the effort of the polite host, and then suddenly his sense of self-loathing at the thought: what the hell am I doing?
I suppose Giri’s self-criticism wasn’t as extreme as that during his conversation with Fiona, but after his fabrications, he too must have briefly wondered: What am I doing here?
For several reasons I had skipped the tournament for the last two years and this year I came back to witness the last round. Some things had changed and some had stayed the same. The Uzbek Nodirbek Abdussatorov won the tournament. He had been quite close to tournament victory in the last three years and now he finally got his due. His loss against Giri, which I mentioned above, remained his only one. Second place went to another Uzbek, Javokhir Sindarov, the winner of last year’s World Cup.
At the exit of the big hall where both the amateurs and the grandmasters were playing, there was a big crowd of autograph hunters. At least half of them were from India. They had not given up rooting for their heroes, even though the Indian players had all performed far below expectations.
What had changed far beyond my expectation was the scenery of the press room and the tournament hall. Screens and cameras all over the place. This gave us spectators much-needed information about the slightest facial twitch of the players. I wondered if there was anyone who would even contemplate cheating under this full blanket of surveillance.
What had remained the same was the essential experience of being submerged in a scene where hundreds of players, amateurs and grandmasters, were all united in the cult of chess. Following the games was easier than ever. I talked with many old friends, some of them having come from far away to be present once again at the greatest chess tournament in the world.
The game viewer (click here) has a double Dutch feature of the most entertaining games by the two Dutch players in the Masters group.