Tilburg chess tournament

The Tilburg chess tournament was a series of very strong chess tournaments held in Tilburg, Netherlands. It was established in 1977 and ran continuously through 1994 under the sponsorship of Interpolis, an insurance company. Fontys Hogescholen shortly revived the tournament series from 1996 to 1998, when the last edition was played. Since 1994 there is another annual chess tournament taking place in Tilburg, which has the name De Stukkenjagers, the field is generally much weaker than the traditional Tilburg tournament.

The first edition was a very strong all-grandmaster event of Category 14. It was a single round-robin tournament with twelve players. Karpov won the event.

The second edition was similar in strength as the first edition, again an all grandmaster event of category 14. No Russian players participated as Karpov and Korchnoi were playing a match at that time and their proposed Russian replacements were not accepted. Portisch won the event.

In 1992 the tournament was for the first time held in the knockout format and comprised three days per round. Game one on day one, game two on day two (both at classic time limits). Day three was a rest day, but for those tied 1-1 it was the day to play two more tie-break games (each with rapid time limit) and in a few cases, another two. The format was described by some commentators as very brutal. Anyone getting off to a slow start would be eliminated and sent home in just two or three days, such as happened to the entire Hungarian squad of Lajos Portisch, Gyula Sax, Zoltán Ribli, József Pintér and Peter Leko. Those who did not win cleanly in the initial two games of each round found fatigue a great problem, due to having to give up their rest days. The benefit over the old double round-robin format, was that it opened up the potential for an unexpected winner and this made it exciting for the spectators. The traditional format favours those highly graded players who win year after year by agreeing quick draws against their closest rivals and defeating the rest.

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