KNSB: SISSA3 – GC6

Why chess.

28.03.2026

Tl ;dr at the end.

“What do you like about chess?”

I’ve asked myself this question a lot.

As someone with a sciency background, you’d think that I appreciate the linearity, the logic, the calculations that comes with it. That I would defend that chess is pure math. And I do appreciate all of that. But it doesn’t quite encapsulate it.

For sure, there’s a bit of nostalgia, too. Already during my preschool years (I won’t tell the dates, we’re scaringly approaching the moment where, when reading this, we would get more people feeling young than people feeling old), I remember watching my siblings play chess with my dad at home. Or, whenever we’d visit my mom’s side of the family, I remember my grandpa showing us the latest chess puzzle he created (200+ through his life! – Maybe I was just destined to be nerdy, but how cool is it to have a chess puzzle named after yourself).

Btw, why is it that quasi-everyone learnt chess from their dad? Is it some sort of untold dad rule? “When you’ll procreate, chess you’ll teach and inappropriate jokes you’ll make”, or something? Now that I think of it, that would explain quite a bit about Writser.

Anyway.

What do I like about chess?

For as far as I can remember (and I can remember quite far), I always found chess beautiful. How two rooks build this invisible yet uncrossable bridge to pierce the opponent’s king. How delivering a simple check can withhold so much threats. How the best piece can be sacrificed to permit a knight to suffocate the enemy. How insignificant pawns can ring the death knell of the game by reaching the other side of the board.

Just, beautiful.

And, art definition is « the expression of human creative skill and imagination […] producing work to be appreciated for their beauty ».

So then, can we consider chess art?

I have no fucking clue. And I’ve been told in the past that my reports already read a lot like some weird scientific assays or like a diary, so let’s not add semi-philosophical thoughts on art to the mix.
Especially since already among SISSA, there’s plenty of better suited people for the job…
…which is kinda part of the beauty of the chess world too, though. The diversity of it.

In what other discipline can you have within the same team of 14 players:
-an age range from 21 to 80 years old
-11 men and 3 women
-at least 3.5 Frysians and 1.5 French
-at least 4 parents (as I said, there’s 11 men in that team, so let’s not exclude any possibility)?

And in what other discipline can you have such a team winning all its games (so far) EXCEPT for the one against their clubmates playing for a supposedly lower rated team?

This is SISSA3 for you. And like chess, we also try to be beautiful.

And for the last game of this season, we have to. At the very least, to honor the performance we had so far.

This year started with the support of our fellow team captains from 1 & 4 (see screenshot), and the most uncomfortable loss in our own playground. Our strategy of using Thijs as canon powder on board 1 unfortunately didn’t work as well as against our strongest opponent of last year. Most of the games went in a usual SISSA3 way, giving me too many strokes. Yet, if like I did, you saw Klaas-Jan spent the afternoon rescuing a draw from his game where he wrongly sacked a piece, you would have known already that SISSA3 was bringing its fighting spirit for the season. (https://www.jsvsissa.nl/verslag/knsb-sissa-off/; https://www.jsvsissa.nl/verslag/knsb-sissa-3-sissa-4-2/).

This was followed by the game against what we anticipated to be one the hardest opponent of the season. However, with the help of an empty board from them, our steady Anne-Dirk on board 1, and a convincing performance from the tail of our team, we (barely) got away with our first win. But watching Maria play an official game against her dad, or seeing the smile on Lieuwe’s face after his first win of the season made it worth all the BP in the world. (https://www.jsvsissa.nl/verslag/sissa-3-hsp-veendam-2/).


Our journey continued in Onna, where the entire team kept giving each other a few scares, but ended up snatching the victory from TAL3 (https://www.jsvsissa.nl/verslag/een-verlaat-verslag-van-sissa-3-tal-3/). Of note, we’ll remember once again Anne-Dirk fighting with everything he had for the sake of the team, in a dangerous position that he could have drawn; Writser blowing everyone’s mind by managing out of constant tricks; Freerk taking all his sweet time to win a game he was winning from the start (and to write the subsequent report); Justin intimidating his opponent into blundering a piece right after he hang his own; and myself turning around a lost pawn endgame in a last desperado attempt.

We remained with the same amount of match points than many other teams within our division, so we had to go for more board points if we wanted to keep up. And this, we did against GC7, with a score of 6.5-1.5 which marked our best performance of the season (https://www.jsvsissa.nl/verslag/knsb-sissa3-gc7/). Best performance of the season the one day neither of the 2 co-captains are present. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. Mine is that Freerk staying within the bestuur for a third year was an amazing decision (or like, thumbs-up worthy), and that we should ask him more often to be in charge of getting everything to run smoothly whenever we host 64 players.

Of course, at this point, we started to be excited and to dread what was becoming the most crucial game of our season: in our tight-knit group of 4 teams at the top of the competition, GC6 was the only contender for the title that we hadn’t faced yet. By winning against them, we would just have to secure some BP for our promotion chances to be very much real. Neither Justin nor me felt very good about our line-up for that game though, and neither did the january Dutch weather, forcing the game to be postponed.
Instead, we finally took our revenge against SISSA4 (6-2!), that, forked tongues will say is thanks to our strategic use of substitutes. Those who have been there remember however the beauty that Anne pulled off during her game against Merlijn, and trust me when I say that this game on its own made our team worthy of such a victory (https://www.jsvsissa.nl/verslag/sissa-off-the-record/).

This might be why we approached our game against Emmen 2 with maybe a bit too much confidence, and this burnt both my wings and Remco’s – for him though, only the first loss of the season! Luckily, the rest of the team picked up our slack, with the notable wins from Justin, who made his opponent’s king danced, and Baran, who wanted to show the rest of the 60 players in that room how it was done. Timmer was not left behind, as he convincingly proved that playing the second black board was a walk in the park (http://jsvsissa.nl/verslag/ksnb-sissa-3-emmen-2/). The victory of that day got sublimed by the news of the draw between Veendam and GC6, leaving only the two SISSA teams at the top of the division.

I think this is when it started to really become real. We could actually win this, it was (still is!) literally in our hands. And yes, it’s only chess, but come on, doesn’t everyone keep playing the game for their next beautiful win?

This made for an electric atmosphere and a vibrant game against Assen 3, that concluded with David, remaining steady even on increment, bringing home the final point we needed to remain ahead of SISSA4 (https://www.jsvsissa.nl/verslag/knsb-sissa-3-assen-3-2/).

This brings us to today.

We’re ahead of SISSA4, yes, but by half a point only. And it is now the time for the infamous game that we were dreading, against GC6, to finally take place.

So, promotion is at stake, yes.

But not only.

If we don’t win more, or at least as much as SISSA4 does, we know that we will never hear the end of it.

The worst case scenario: if we lose, and so does SISSA4 against TAL3, it’s as a club that we lose that promotion.

Surely, we can’t allow it. And we can’t control what SISSA4 does (can they? I’ve seen them played, I wouldn’t bet a limb on it, it’s SISSA3’s little sibling after all).

So we take the matter into our own hands.

I start with inviting the team over for brunch. Naturally, within a few minutes of being ignored in the team app, I harass Justin about it, who in turn starts to harass the team about it. I love co-captaining.

And for this upcoming game, we prepared a beautiful line-up together. What could go wrong?

When Saturday finally arrives, the problems immediately start: Remco can’t make it.

Now, I love all my teammates, but particularly to me, Remco is such an important part of SISSA3’s soul. He was there when it was created 5 years ago. He captained it. He came back to spearhead it. And he does so beautifully. So it has been one minute that we read his message and we miss him already.

Luckily, both Justin and me are known to keep our calm and never panic.

Lol, as if.

But as usual this year, we have enough extra players available, and Justin promptly gets Niels to play.

So this is the updated line-up for THE game of the season:

1.      Writser, the killer
2.      Anne-Dirk, the guy with a smirk
3.      Timmer, the other killer
4.      Freerk, the other guy with a smirk
5.      David, DA one we need
6.      Aurore, I-hope-after-reading-this-line-up-you’ll-get-why-I’m-not-making-rhymes-anymore
7.      Justin, just IN
8.      Klaas-Jan, the classy man

(Please don’t let me do that ever again)

The pressure is high. The excitement, higher.

Before leaving for the games, I check that everyone has a pen. To my surprise, I get a unanimous positive answer, and even some players slightly offended that I thought they’d forget something.

I close the door behind us.

Then I open it again because Anne-Dirk forgot his bag.

I close it again.

Then Justin comes back up, frenetically looking for his scarf.

(Maybe I should have told him I was stealing it)

After a smooth ride to DSC for anyone who anyone who wasn’t sitting on Freerk’s bike carrier due to realizing this morning that her own bike had a flat tire, we take place behind our boards.

To my left, Justin asks me for a pen because his is not working.

First relief of the day: GC6 didn’t make a funky line-up, and their strongest player is playing on board 1. The rest of the line-up is also quite expected, but I’m pretty sure that no one besides Writser prepared. As for Writser, I believe that his prep mostly consisted of anticipating a French, but this allows him to win quite some time in the opening.

Soon enough, we all reach 10+ moves, with more than 1:15 on our clocks. I know it’s silly, but I always find it comforting to see the boards around me being as far in their moves numbers than I am.

I go take a look at Freerk’s board. He was a bit annoyed this morning that in previous reports, several people mentioned that his positions were a bit boring. « It’s not boring, it’s positional, I wish people would understand that ». Dude, it’s 3…Qd8.

Anyway, not that kind of opening today. I mean, not the 3…Qd8 part.

But for the boring part… I look at the board… Freerk looks at me… I look at him…we look at the board… We laugh. He knows what I think and I know what he thinks.

To find something fun, it is much better to check Niels’board next to him. To be very honest, the reason I don’t mention Niels a lot in my reports, is because I try to stay a bit away from his board. Don’t get me wrong, love the guy, but his chess is too much for my heart. I’m not the only one questioning what’s happening there and a few people gather around. But honestly, he is Nielsing and nailing it. That what Niels(es ?) do.

Nxc6, Nxc6, Bxc6, Rb8, axb5 and I am actually breathing a bit.

45 minutes into the games and… it’s alright?

It looks even nice on some boards?

Maybe, I need to get behind the idea that we might really be one of the best teams of the division.

Maybe, the time when SISSA3 was blundering left and right at any given moment is behind us, and we all just play properly now.

Well. I’m nothing but a nostalgic person, so once again, I take matters into my own hands.

After taking a bit of time to find a move I was happy with, I move my bishop. I actually was careful not to make a queen move, to avoid leaving my bishop with no defense while my opponent’s queen was attacking it. Because it would be silly, a bishop with no defense while my opponent’s queen attacks it. I press the clock.

And I immediately see it. Because it’s obvious, I’ll have to do something about the check while his queen will be attacking my undefended bishop (@Edim, does it sound familiar?).

It’s so obvious.

And it’s too late.

There has been this running joke for many years, that I am always blundering pieces.

There was the time in the tournament in Bruges, but I wasn’t playing for a team.

There was the SISSA-off against Rick, where I blundered a knight, and the SISSA-off against Stijn, where I blundered a bishop.
But we already established that SISSA4 was (deservely so) our kryptonite.

There was the time in a sisters game 2 years ago, where I blundered a rook but then found a checkmate.

There was the time in KNSB last season, where I blundered a rook in a Queen vs 2 rooks endgame.

And the KNSB again this season, where I blundered a rook again.

Okay, fair, I’m not saying that I don’t deserve my reputation. But like… I thought a rook per year was okay? Isn’t that what Sjoerd says?

Anyway.
I think it’s okay to blunder sometimes. I don’t think this one was okay.
Not today.
Not this game.
Not again.
I had reached my quota for the season.

But what can you do?
Anne-Dirk says that it happens to the best ones, and he would know.

So, I keep on playing, and there it is again: hope-chess.
Try to keep the queens on the board to hope for a repetition.
Try to play on activity and hope his pieces won’t ever move.
Try to find some tricky pins and hope he messes up.

One last try.
Getting a pawn, trading knights. I’ll still be missing a bishop, but hey, maybe it can still be tricky.
Or he can ignore my knight, and sacrifices his on f6. Which once again, I notice right after pressing the clock.
Note to self : maybe double check if what you initially calculated 4 moves ago still works once it’s there.
Because of course it doesn’t. With his beautiful bishop on b2, and the beautiful open h file on which his rook is sitting, gxf6 would be met by Rh8#. Not taking the knight loses me another piece and a kwal. I just find this move beautiful. It’s painful.

I play a few more moves, mostly to find my composure, and I resign.

0-1


You know how painful your loss is when absolutely all of your teammates give you some pat on the back. One offers me a drink. Thijs, who’s here today as a non-playing supporter offers me some Twix.

You know how extremely painful your loss is, when even the captain of your opponents tries to comfort you: « Oh you’re writing the report already? At least your quick loss wasn’t for nothing. I like your reports. That’s what we’re missing in our team. ».

It’s nice actually. When he approached me, I initially thought that it would be to complain about me using my phone in the playing hall. I was taking notes and also some illustrative pictures, but kinda assumed it was fine. And after this short discussion, I get some reassurance about it. Surely, if this was a big issue, someone would inform me, RIGHT?
This gets relevant later.

Anyway. What’s up now?

Games have been going on for close to 90 minutes already. Let’s start to count points.

Potential 3-1?

On our top boards, Anne-Dirk and Writser’s positions could still go either way. I have faith but it’s up for discussion. Especially for Writser’s. But I have faith.

Justin’s… eh, it’s like David’s. I don’t understand shit. It looks like stuff they had before? They look like they know what they’re doing? I don’t know, David’s king has been a bit exposed for quite some time and he seemed to not have any issues with it.
As for Justin, it looks like he’s forming an attack but I don’t see where or how it’s going. Again, it says more about me than about him.

It stresses me.

I go back to less stressful places.

Freerk’s opponent seems to have adopted my hope chess strategy.

Except that his Queen+bishop battery aiming at the open dark squares around Freerk’s king is actually scary.
And Freerk has less than 5 minutes on the clock, against 29.
And they’re only at move 29.

It is easy enough to defend though.

But a feeling that I personally hate more than the one I get when playing a lost position, is the one I get when I know I am winning in a position but that I need to do it QUICKLY. Does Freerk also get this kind of brain freeze?

This is not at all less stressful.

I approach Klaas-Jan’s board.
His knight is attacked by his opponent’s bishop. He places his rook in between the two.

So I am walking away from that board, too.

(Not right away, I’m not crazy. After an initial mental gasp – that by now is mostly out of principle – I can only appreciate the beauty of the move: if his opponent takes the rook, Klaas-Jan gets a new queen)

Anne-Dirk gets a draw offer. We discussed with the team earlier today the priority: secure a win for the team first, and only focus on securing the board points after, or when we hear that SISSA4 secured their own win.

The team is doing well though. I tell Anne-Dirk as much, and tell him that if he feels like continuing he doesn’t have to take it. He plays on.

Next to him Writser’s endgame keeps unfolding :

Time to maybe spend some time with Niels.

His position is going from good to gooder. Our last minute substitute is gonna bring it home, I am now 99% sure of that (need to keep the 1% for the SISSA3 uncertainty factor).

It’s’ 4 o’clock already and Niels’redemption arc is reaching his climax.

He trades rooks on b8, places his knight on d4 to cover his pawns, and…

…his opponent resigns.

Somehow, he and I never scored the same results this season. That’s how you keep a team balanced. Maybe too balanced.

1-1

One white board lower, I keep changing my estimation of David’s position.

It feels good. If this game doesn’t keep changing direction, that would make for at least 4-1, almost surely securing SISSA’s promotion.

I notice Annelies walking in. She’s also part of the GC6 team. Not gonna lie, I am a bit relieved that she isn’t playing today. I played against her once, and she crushed me.

But today she’s not playing.

And today we are winning.

And if I would have been less focused on the people walking around, I’d have noticed that David’s opponnent, probably too bumped out by how quickly his position turned into a sour one, resigned. No more rollercoasters on that board, and we are one point closer to victory. That’s what we like.

2-1

I receive an update about SISSA4 score. They’re currently ahead but it doesn’t look good for them. At all.

Oh. 
That means we absolutely need to secure the win.

On Writser’s board, only pawns are left. Is black winning ? Can white hold this ?

At least, Writser and his opponent have a similar amount of time left.

This is not the case for Freerk. He is still under 5 minutes, and only at move 32. He has such a good position though.

He casually takes the white knight, and his opponent lets out a small laugh. The move doesn’t blunder a queen, chess is just beautiful like that and he appreciates it.

A few more moves get played, but what can white do ? Freerk’s advantage is just too much. Russell resigns. What a game.

3-1

I am getting so much more relaxed. It is going the way it looked like it was going.

But I am still not completely sure that Writser can hold his endgame.

Our teammate is stuck babysitting his pawn. Eventually, he takes b7 while black picks up c6. Both kings march towards the remaining pawns, but the GC player makes sure to keep the opposition. He gets f2 while Writser takes g4. …Kg2 and it’s over.

The tension was high. 

And the endgame was beautiful. 

And punishing.

3-2

I’m slightly less relaxed again.

On the other side of the room, Klaas-Jan’s super strong passer seems to lead to a position with a less convincing advantage than I had initially hoped for.

Next to him, Justin needs some brain fuel for his endgame. And luckily, he still has some of Elise’s cookies. He knows it’ll make her happy to know this helped him. I know that, too. So naturally, I take what I believed to be an innocent picture.

And that’s when it happens.
Mr The Arbiter, himself in person, runs right to me. His face, red from the anger by the outrage I had just committed, is less than 20 centimeters away from mine. He whispers-screams (quite a performance, I wonder if it’s part of the criteria to become official chess arbiter) at me.

I had done the unforgivable.
All the « sorry » I manage to mutter in between two sentences of his righteous lecture will not suffice.
I had sinned.
I had faulted.
It was time to receive the sentence I deserved.

Death penalty.

Thus, I am kicked out of the playing hall.

Now don’t get me wrong, causing disturbance during the games is not something I ever want to be responsible for. And I can’t tell for sure whether I was cautious enough to not bother the actual players, even though I hoped so.

So I’ll leave a question open:

was this such a bad behavior that it didn’t even deserve a simple warning, or to be addressed calmly?

And am I bitter that I missed Klaas-Jan’s win because I was busy having my time-off and reflecting on my actions?

This one I’ll answer: yes, definitely.

But Klaas Jan wins. At least that’s what I heard.

4-2

So… We’re probably winning this.
Because I assume that Anne-Dirk will bring at least a halfje. He never really was in any dangerous situation, and his endgame has been going on for a while now.

He creates a passer. However, the position of the white pieces keeps everything stuck. I think it is a bit beautiful. There’s no connection between any pawns, and only bishops that can’t touch each other. And yet, nothing can happen. Damn, chess.

A very clean and solid game for our board 2 player. And is there a better draw than the one that finally ensures that SISSA promotes ?

4.5-2.5

We hear that Dylan and Sjors turned over the faith of SISSA4. Their team reached 4.5 too, also with one remaining player.

If they get to 5.5, Justin needs to win for us to keep the promotion.

Is it possible ?

Just before the apocalyptic cookie incident, Justin had informed me that he « fucked-up and threw his win away ». This is NOT something you want to hear during THE game of the season. But I guess he didn’t want to hear that I had blundered a piece for no reason. We love co-captaining.
In his case though, he still remained with one more piece than his opponent.

His only fuck-up was to let the h pawn go. Justin trades queens and gets rid of the highest menace for his very exposed king. But with time troubles, he makes some interesting move choices that we all question.
Freerk, David and I stop watching for a bit, because there’s only so much we can support.

And more importantly, we just heard that the final score of SISSA4 remains 4.5.
We all did the previous math together, we all know that we started this game with 0.5 more than them, and we are all aware that our score is already at 4.5.
Our combined thinking efforts make the three of us conclude that Justin now only needs to draw to ensure promotion.

We inform him as much. He also now knows that a loss means that SISSA4 steals our hat.

It is a bit stressful for everyone, ngl.
Maybe, all our shaking connects our brain cells together again.

We check, double check, and triple check…
…actually, it’s already over.

We already reached the score we needed to remain ahead.

And just like that, regardless of Justin’s results, we’re champions of the 6A.

For good measure, our team captain plays for another 2 hours (fine, it was probably only 20 minutes). No more weight on his shoulders.

Some more moves, some more checks, and eventually, his opponent resigns.

5.5-2.5

We did it.

Roel, GC6’team captain is the first to congratulate us. We chat for a bit. It is always so nice to have positive interactions with your opponents.

He also wishes us his best for next year in the 5^th division.
Competition there is quite tough, he says.

Well. Sounds like a problem for the future SISSA3.

SISSA3…

For a little while, I joined SISSA3.

It still blows my mind that chess is played in competition as a team. And that I enjoy that even more every year.


Between the influx of new SISSA members and everyone’s chess prowess, it is still unclear who will even be in which KNSB team next season. But it’s SISSA, so the (6?) teams will be more than fine, regardless of the composition.

I sincerely believe that a team is as fun and as nice as you make it to be.

I have really loved SISSA3 this year.

But I also really loved it the previous ones.

I have missed, Tije hiding in his hoodie while concocting his next beautiful tactic. Rick torturing his opponent so hard that he forces him to take his queen for no reason, and still wins. Joshua’s forever kind words after a teammate missed an obvious move. Merlijn’s crazy games, where he keeps finding moves that adds more tactics to a position that is already crazy. How casually Paul arrives at a game, always ready to take down whoever he has to play, regardless of his board’s position or color.

Yes, the current SISSA3 won this promotion fair and square. But does it mean that this is the exact team that should play in the 5th division next season?

We wouldn’t have won, if SISSA4 didn’t take down GC, too.

At the start of the season, we made a point to make both teams balanced, rather than putting all the best players in SISSA3. 

We made a point to ensure that being in one team or the other didn’t mean much.

At the end of the season, this has not changed.


Today, SISSA3 won.


Today, SISSA4 won.


Today, SISSA is promoting.

SISSA…

For a little while, I joined SISSA.

It still blows my mind that a chess club can provide such a vibrant community.
(and dramas. Actually more dramas than I would have imagined… and I wish I could say I didn’t contribute to any 🙈)

I didn’t come for the chess and stayed for the people. I came for the people and I never looked back. All the chess was just a beautiful bonus. Or is it the other way around?

After 5 years, it might be time to say good bye.

I don’t exactly know what’s next yet.

I know that this was my last season as chair, and, within the bestuur.
It’s time for new enthusiasm to take over, but I’ll still wonder if I gave enough back to the club to call it even.

I know that this was my last season as team captain.
One relegation, one maintenance and one promotion. This one we can literally call even.

And my last season within SISSA?
I don’t know yet what life is gonna bring me, and when. Or, where, even.

But even if I leave the beautiful Groningen, chess will remain in my life, and SISSA in my heart.
It’s only a chess club. But is it only a chess club?
Well, it is my first chess club, for one.
Also, it is, de gezelligste schaakclub.
And of course, like chess, SISSA is beautiful.

Thank you, all. 🫶

PS: @whoever makes it to sissa3 next year, you’d better not relegate, we’re not going through this shit show again.

Tl ;dr :