Karpov and Timman Guests of Honor at Groningen Chess Festival
In the last week of the year, Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman will be playing a four-game match alongside the Groningen Chess Festival. The match between Karpov and Timman, which is held twenty years after their historic world title match, will be held in the Groninger Museum.
The 51st edition of the Groningen Chess Festival will be held 21st-30th December and will see a record number of grandmasters as well as amateur players from the Netherlands and abroad. Guests of honor are Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman, who will play a four-game match 26th-29th December in the Groninger Museum. The games will be transmitted live on the internet and in the museum Hans Böhm will give commentary.
The match will see some side events, such as a review by both players of their historic 1993 world title match (on December 28th in Hampshire Plaza), workshops for young talents and simuls. The match was made possible by the Northern Netherland-Russia Foundation and is held with the Netherlands-Russia Year coming to an end. With the Groninger Museum as the location, we definitely see a continuning trend of chess events being held in museums.
The festival itself will be held in the Sports Center of the Rijksuniversiteit and Hanzehogeschool. Sixteen GMs have already entered the open tournament, including 24-year-old Maxim Rodshtein. With a rating of 2664 he tops the list, and having won the Univé Open in Hoogeveen in October he's definitely the man to beat this year. His rivals include Evgeny Romanov (2654) of Russian and Dutch GM Erwin L’Ami (2645), as well as the winners of last year: Zaven Andriasian (2621, Armenia), Alexander Kovchan (2562, Ukraine) and Sipke Ernst (2573, Netherlands).
One of the many side events is the University of Groningen Chess Challenge. This is another four-game match between Jan Werle (GM, 2510) and Nick Maatman (Dutch U20 Champion, 2227). And of course there are different rating groups for amateur players, 5-round events, a Grand Prix youth tournament, a school championship and much more.
More info (in Dutch) can be found on the official website.
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
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