Second to None: Warmerdam's Dutch Championship

In January of this year, Max Warmerdam made his debut at the elite level in the incredibly strong Tata Steel Masters. Although he had the most decisive results of all 14 participants, his performance was unfortunately only good enough for 14th place. Since then, Max has increased his rating from 2617 to 2676, an impressive feat that has been somewhat overlooked by the chess world. Thus, this blog post aims to highlight his recent victory at the Dutch Championships.

Max first captured the chess world's attention shortly after earning his GM title at the beginning of 2021, when he worked as a second for Jorden van Foreest (who won the 2021 Tata Steel Masters) and Anish Giri during the second half of the 2020-2021 Candidates. Anish showed many new opening ideas there and came close to fighting for first.

Fast forward to two weeks ago at the Dutch Championships, Max convincingly won the knockout tournament, eliminating all 4 of his opponents in the classical portion. Although Max's victory was made easier by the absence of Anish and the van Foreest brothers, the following instructive games show how Max combined strategy with tactics to score 2 crucial wins in the semi-final and final matches.

~Hurburt