This year the Tata Steel company had imposed an austerity regimen on the tournament in Wijk aan Zee. The big tent on the village meadow, where, in previous years commentators had entertained the public and the company had entertained cherished guests, was now gone. The bookstalls at the entrance of the tournament hall had gone too. The three grandmaster groups that in the past were named with dignified simplicity, groups A, B, and C, were reduced to two and their names had been modernized as “Masters” and “Challengers.”

Carlsen and Anand did not take part, but I don’t think that this had anything to do with the austerity program. Both players had already decided not to play at Wijk early in 2013, which was understandable. The winner of their match, especially if his name was Magnus Carlsen, would be occupied with a triumphant world tour and the loser might feel that he was already out in the cold enough without facing a wintry Dutch coastal village.

Still, it was a pity. Carlsen had played in Wijk aan Zee every year since 2004. But the main thing was that the tournament still existed – which had been doubtful for quite some time – with the traditional participation of not only the grandmasters, but also of more than a thousand amateurs in the lower groups.

At the opening ceremony, the most important news went almost unnoticed. On the backside of a program booklet, the dates of the tournament of 2015 were given in very small print. One needed a magnifying glass to read it and very few people did so at the time, but at the closing ceremony the good news was officially confirmed.

The fourth round of the Masters group was played not in Wijk aan Zee, but at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. This innovation, in line with a recent trend to combine chess and art, was quite successful, as this round got a tremendous coverage from media that wouldn’t venture to go out as far as Wijk aan Zee. The museum director, Wim Pijbes, expressed the hope that it would be the start of a tradition, as he found that chess and art were natural companions that both required quiet, attention and concentration.

The games were played in the auditorium of the museum, a good location, but many people had hoped that it would be in one of the exhibition halls, preferably the one with Rembrandt’s famous Night Watch.

But would that be possible? The museum could hardly deny access to that famous hall to the art lovers, but with a super-tournament going on, they would have to conform to the strict rules operative in Wijk aan Zee: mouth shut, cellphones off and in case of a cellphone ringing, a stiff penalty for the benefit of the Dutch Red Cross. Audio guides of the museum would be anathema, as the sound might seep outward and disturb the thinking process of the chess giants. I doubt if the art lovers would manage to summon our strict discipline.

Psychologists writing about chess often mentioned the seething emotions that are only just smothered and repressed by this discipline of silence. There is always the danger that the emotional volcano will burst open.

During the tournament, Irish and British newspapers reported on a murder in Dublin after a quarrel about a chess game. Apparently an illegal move had been made.

According to The Guardian, the police had declared that some details were too horrible to mention. Other newspapers, less squeamish, wrote of cannibalism, a room looking like a slaughterhouse and police officers in need of psychological help.

They must have been weak players, these two in Dublin. A strong player knows how to control himself.

Recently I saw Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, an entertaining movie, though not entertaining enough to justify its length of three hours. A Dutch viewer was quoted saying that in fact it was one extended trailer: “If you have seen the trailer, you know the whole movie.” And indeed, the association that I had while watching it, was with a long commercial clip for Bacardi Rum, with its crowd of raving partygoers.

I only dare to present these thoughts because recently I found that the great Aron Nimzowitsch had tried his hand at playing movie critic in much greater detail in one of his articles about chess.

Anyway, the main character of The Wolf of Wall Street is a sociopath (and therefore understandably popular with real-life workers in the financial trade). As a wedding present, he presents his wife with a luxurious yacht, and while he shows her around on the boat we briefly see a chess set.

Does the Wolf play chess then? Nothing in the movie had suggested that he did, but still this brief shot of a chess set must mean something. Maybe it meant that the Wolf would rather have become a chessplayer than a financial pirate, but was unable to attain that noble goal, missing the strength of character that is needed for the discipline of silence.

There are so many stories to tell about the tournament. Obviously the Masters supplied the main dish, but I crossed my fingers for Jan Timman, who played in the Challengers group. This group had thirteen rounds and near the end Timman, 62 years old now, got tired and scored three draws from the last three games, of which he should have won two. But he had fought valiantly, finished on second place (shared with Baadur Jobava) and won a lot of rating points.

In the Masters Group, Levon Aronian played wonderfully. He had secured tournament victory already in the penultimate round and in the last round his aim was to beat Loek van Wely and thereby reach a score of 9 out of 11, setting a record: the highest percentage and TPR ever achieved in Wijk aan Zee. He would have surpassed Kasparov and Carlsen.

But between dream and deed comes time pressure. After a double-edged game in which Aronian had been much better most of the time, he faltered and reached a position where he was already a bit worse.

DIAGRAM AFTER BLACK’S 37TH move.

Aronian, still thinking that he was winning, played 38.exf4, which was met by the devastating 38...Bd4+ which interrupted the crucial connection of White’s queen and rook with square d1, essential to answer Black’s Qb1+. With only seconds left only the clock Aronian managed to resign before he would have overstepped the time limit.