Mijn eerste scalp

Recently Ton Sijbrands wrote a booklet about his first victory against a strong opponent in 1963. At the age of 13, Sijbrands started making a list of victories against participants of Dutch championships. His first scalp was Henk Beeke. Besides a very thorough analysis of this game, Sijbrands takes the reader back to the earliest memories of his draughts career. The book is a must-read for those who want to study games about the Roozenburg attack, named after former world champion Piet Roozenburg. The cover of the book features a position that could have appeared in the game Hein Meijer - Anton van Berkel 2014.

white to move

Sijbrands made a phenomenal discovery when analyzing this position with the computer program Kingsrow. It looks like white can simply win a piece with 26.37-32? But then black has an incredible combination. It is only 4 moves deep, but it is so obscured that very few players would notice it during a game: 13-19! 27.32x21 12-18! 28.21x3 22-27! 29.31x24 14-19!! 30.3x5 19x46 31.5x28 46x45 B+ Besides this, the book contains many more instructive examples of games with a Roozenburg attack.

The highlight of the game Sijbrands - Beeke is the position below. Perhaps at this moment Beeke still expected to equalize the position with ≡ 2-7 followed by 7-11 6x17 and 8-12 17x8 13x2. But Sijbrands found a brilliant move that shattered the hopes of his opponent. I'll leave it to the reader to find it.

Ton Sijbrands - Henk Beeke 2-0

The booklet is a printed version of an analysis that Sijbrands made for https://damkunst.nl. Damkunst is an initative of Ben Provoost, to promote the game of draughts. The book can be ordered for 17.50 euros by sending an e-mail to Ben Provoost: damjournalist@gmail.com.