The 2021 edition of the “chess Wimbledon” at Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee will go down as perhaps the most remarkable, surprising and controversial of all the annual tournaments which began in the small North Sea town in 1938. Its wartime editions in hungry times are still honoured by pea soup at its closing dinner. Not this year, though, when only the grandmaster section was staged amid strict anti-pandemic precautions.
Jorden van Foreest, seeded 11th among 14 and little known outside the Netherlands, finished ahead of the world top two, Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, in one of the great upsets of chess history, comparable to Harry Pillsbury at Hastings 1895 or Glenn Flear at London 1986. The 21-year-old also became the first Dutch winner at Wijk for 36 years.
Van Foreest defeated his compatriot and world No 7, Anish Giri, in a speed tie-break where he was often under pressure, until right at the end when a winning passed pawn ready to promote to queen turned the tables. At move 58 Giri upset several pieces which disabled the live stream, then blundered and on move 62 allowed his clock to run out. The excitement affected the commentators, who included Giri’s wife, Sopiko Guramishvili, herself an international master.
There are chess families involving one or two generations: Hungary’s Polgar sisters Susan, Sofia, and the all-time No 1 woman, Judit; USA’s Byrne brothers who both separately lost famous brilliancies to Bobby Fischer; and England’s John, Norman and Paul Littlewood. But Van Foreest, who was Dutch champion in 2016, is the top player in what may be the only chess multi-generation dynasty.
He is the oldest of a family of six, including Lucas, the 2019 Dutch champion, and his sister Machteld, 13, who has won the Dutch U12 championship. His great-great grandfather Arnold and his great-great granduncle Dirk won six Dutch titles between them at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, so that the dynasty has spanned three centuries.
Van Foreest admitted to being shocked by his own victory, and said that he considered his chances of repeating it in the foreseeable future were “zero per cent”. Brilliant opening prep was a key to his success, particularly in his final round against Sweden’s Nils Grandelius.
Earlier at Wijk Carlsen had unleashed the rare Najdorf Sicilian (1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6) counter 6 Qd3!? Grandelius lost with 6…e6, so Van Foreest and his coach concentrated on 6…Nbd7 as the likely alternative and successfully predicted the whole opening, which Van Foreest played at blitz speed, right up to 17 c4! by when Grandelius already had a difficult position and was more than an hour behind on the clock. At the end, White’s final king march to h6 was an echo of a famous win by Nigel Short against Jan Timman.
Final leading scores at Wijk were Van Foreest and Giri (both Netherlands) 8.5/13, Andrey Esipenko (Russia), Caruana (US) and Firouzja 8, Carlsen (Norway) 7.5.
The incident-packed final day sparked impressive numbers in the online audience. Tata estimated that millions watched part of the event, over 705,000 tuned in on the final day, while 80,000 viewed the concluding Armageddon.
The final round Firouzja controversy has generated a huge response on chess websites and social media. While the former Iranian prodigy 17, was pressing for a win against Poland’s No 2, Radoslaw Wojtaszek, he was interrupted by the arbiter who wanted the players to move to a different table to allow the play-off to be set up on a central board for TV coverage. The players had been previously advised that this could happen. Firouzja’s Sonneborn-Berger tie-break based on his results against individual opponents could place him third, but he could still equal Giri and Van Foreest’s 8.5/13 total by winning.
Victory would put his world ranking up to No 11, and would also arguably equal Carlsen’s 2008 record of finishing equal first at Wijk at age 17. These potential outcomes made what was hanging on the game and its result of similar importance to the Giri v Van Foreest tie-break.
Shortly before the move 60 time control, Firouzja’s position showed +2 on the computer assessment, meaning close to a winning position. Then he became visibly disturbed, was approached by the arbiter (who forgot to stop the clocks) at move 60, refused to transfer to another board, and quickly fell into a Wojtaszek trap which led to an immediate draw.
As he had spoiled a probable win after being disturbed during a game, Firouzja was angry. Immediately after the draw was agreed, he turned hostile toward the organiser, shouting words which, according to the chess.com report by Peter Doggers, “cannot be repeated here”. While their play-off was in progress, Giri and van Foreest could hear the noise from the playing hall.
Tata Steel Chess later issued a bland statement apologising for what happened and promising to do better in 2022. Firouzja has offered no further comment, which seems to be part of a general policy of revealing little about himself apart from his games and results. Some now want to draw a line under what happened and move on, while others remain dissatisfied and expect a head or heads to roll within Tata Steel Chess.
What of Carlsen at Wijk? The world champion began with a fine win against Firouzja, got bogged down with draws, lost to 17-year-old Esipenko through casual middle game defence, then fought back in the remaining rounds to finish on plus two, sixth place but only a single point behind the winners.
The Norwegian was typically hard on himself in a post-tournament interview, but objectively the overall Wijk results were not bad for him. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, currently leader of the world title candidates scheduled for resumption in April, finished next to last, while Caruana, who won Wijk in 2020, lacked some sharpness. And if it comes to Carlsen v Firouzja in 2022 or later, Carlsen is now well cast for the role of sympathetic Boris Spassky up against a brash young rival.
3709 With all 32 pieces still on the board, Gligoric won by 1…f4 2 Ngf1 (2 f3 fxg3 is just a piece ahead) Ra8 3 Qb7 Re7! and White resigned as Be8 will trap the queen.