Tight battle for final place in World Cup Frisian Draughts in Harlingen
On Monday evening 19 and Tuesday 20 August, the tension was palpable in the council chamber of the Harlingen town hall. Jelle Wiersma had already secured a place in the finals. Teake Kooistra still had to play him and he won with a vicious stroke. Hereafter there were already two finalists. But who would be the other two? In theory, there were as many as eight contenders, but their numbers quickly dwindled. Lukasz Kosobudzki and Folkert Groenveld were eliminated by Marten Walinga and Fedde Kramer, respectively, and these two now stood a good chance with their 4.5 points. Players who could not get beyond 4 were now also eliminated. But Ties Slagter could still equal Kramer and Walinga, and only needed to beat the youthful Siward Walinga (0 points) to do so. But that was easier said than done. Walinga jr. built up a very solid game, and from the late middle game onwards the chances changed constantly. Both regularly missed a continuation to victory, and in the end the game seemed to end in a draw. But Siward Walinga had to play a hard-to-find sacrifice, followed by a sticky move, and that turned out to be too much to ask. In the end, his moves ran out and Ties Slagter won the game.
With that, there were five candidates for the finals, of which one still had to drop out. To that end, Marten Walinga, Ties Slagter and Fedde Kramer played a barrage on Tuesday 20 August, always with half the normal thinking time, but still good for two hours per game. In the first game, Slagter tried to play defensively against Walinga, but was presented with a tricky gambit: a piece advantage in a tricky position. He did not manage to get out of it, and eventually got slaughtered.
Slagter, however, was lucky against Kramer. In the middle game the latter saw the possibility of a brilliant combination, but when he wanted to execute it, he overlooked one detail. That cost him several pieces and the game pretty soon after.
To have still a chance, Kramer now had to win from Walinga, but that was not easy. In an in itself well-balanced game he saw too late that his left wing was trapped by a minority of opponent’s pieces. He could now choose between simply sacrificing pieces without compensation or allowing a winning combination. He did the latter, and thus Walinga convincingly beat himself into the pool for the finals.
So the finalists are: Jelle Wiersma, Teake Kooistra, Marten Walinga, Ties Slagter. They each have to play twice against everyone else. The first games start Wednesday 21 August at 10 am.
Final results preliminary rounds:
1-2 Jelle Wiersma, Taeke Kooistra (5.5 p.)
3-4 Marten Walinga, Ties Slagter (4.5 p.)
5 Fedde Kramer (4.5 p.)
6-9 Folkert Groenveld, Willem Schaap, Lukasz Kosobudzki, Hein de Vries (4 p.)
10 Petra Dusková (3.5 p.)
11-12 Dicky van der Meer, Auke Zijlstra (3 p.)
13-14 Porter Richardson, Aleksej Domcev (2.5 p.)
15 Malte Schulz (1 p.)
16 Siward Walinga (0 p.)
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Schedule Wednesday 21 August 2024
Taeke Kooistra - Marten Walinga
Ties Slagter - Jelle Wiersma
Marten Walinga - Taeke Kooistra
Jelle Wiersma - Ties Slagter
