Being there

To give you a sense of what it is like in the wee little town of Wijk aan Zee for a few weeks in January, here are three video clips. (They are around 30 seconds each as that seems like what I can upload successfully.) Upper left pans the town, with the steel plant - the tournament sponsor and predominant employer for the town - looming over the hill. Upper right shows the stream of chess players coming from every direction to the playing hall. Lower left shows pictures of tournament champions covering decades that lines the bookstore. And the picture in the lower right is from a restaurant that was used for the spill over of players from the amateur tournaments. Note the glass of wine while playing in the tournament.

Everywhere you go you see people playing chess in bars and restaurants, some in a tournament section but mostly just playing for fun. And at dinner time, at the few nice restaurants around town, you see the top players eating dinner, too. Like at my last dinner I literally was surrounded by Hikaru Nakamura, Varuzhan Akobian, Liviu Nisipeanu, and Sergey Karjakin. It is indeed a cozy little town.

I will suggest one thing if you are tempted to come here next year: come with a friend. Having meals alone was the one tough aspect to my trip simply because this is such a social environment. The restaurants are always abuzz(!) with chatter with most people seeming like very good friends. And while many locals can speak English, what you hear is Dutch and German. So I just think having a fellow English speaking chess fanatic around would be a good thing! Go and enjoy!