Walinga takes the lead in the World Championship match for the first time
Harlingen – The seventh game of the World Championship match in Frisian draughts has given Marten Walinga the lead for the first time. After a thrilling and long-lasting game, he defeated challenger Taeke Kooistra, thereby taking the lead in the match: 4–3.
The ceremonial opening move was made by FMJD board member Jan van Dijk. In his short speech, he emphasised the importance of the various draughts variants within the international draughts community. According to Van Dijk, the strength of the draughts family lies precisely in its diversity, within which Frisian draughts also deserves a rightful place. That message is in keeping with his commitment to the international promotion of the game of draughts. As a player, he is also proficient in the Frisian variant; last year he won the highly competitive African Open Frisian Draughts Tournament in Yaoundé. After the opening, Van Dijk took his seat in the analysis room, where, together with multiple world champion in international draughts Alexander Shvartsman, he provided expert live commentary on the game.
The position prior to the seventh game was completely balanced. Both players started cautiously and gave each other hardly any room for a long time. It was only in the late middlegame and the subsequent endgame that the differences began to become apparent. Kooistra’s white pieces found themselves in an increasingly difficult position as he fell slightly behind in tempo and came under mounting time pressure.
The analysts, too, saw the initiative gradually shift towards Walinga. Van Dijk and Shvartsman concluded that the reigning world champion’s positional advantage was growing steadily, although the winning position still had to be calculated precisely. With the clock as an additional opponent, a slim chance of a draw remained for Kooistra, but this required extremely precise calculations.
In the endgame, in which both players had promoted a king and Walinga also held a one-piece advantage, Kooistra ultimately chose a line of play that definitively secured victory for Walinga. With this, the reigning world champion recorded his third consecutive victory and took the lead for the first time in this thrilling world title match.
At the same time, the online tournaments concluded with two finals on the Lidraughts draughts platform, in both the FRYSK! variant and the classic variant. The eventual winners were the Czech Petra Dušková and the young Russian draughts player Ilfat Karimov, respectively.
Photo 1: Jan van Dijk makes the opening move on Taeke Kooistra’s board
Photo 2: Referee Piet Sikma looks on as Kooistra plays with the white pieces against Walinga
