Bim bam boom badaboom Bedum

11.11.2025

13 years ago or so, the sisters had their very first game, and it happened in Bedum. Some lovely historic game where people like Frits, Sipke or Geon attended as spectators. Cue to present day, not only the sisters are still playing, they’re back in Bedum and they are more than ever. SISSA signed-up 5 new sisters this September only. And with that, the current plague that the club suffers from, also afflicts the sisters: for the upcoming two games, we have 2 to 3 too many players available within the sisters team.
Fortunately, while we all wait impatiently for next season to register new teams, all sissa team leaders have so far done their best to handle the overflow of players, and Nouschkain-the-captain is no exception. 

Now, and in case someone is reading one of my reports for the first time, this might be a good moment to make the disclaimer that I am completely biased towards Sissa, and that I have so much appreciation for all the members of our lil’ (not so lil’ anymore) lovely community. 

Back to the sisters, what are the chances for our team tonight?

On board 1, Femke will have to work her magic against Roelof Kroon, an almost 2200 player. It will definitely be a tough game. However, at sissa, we know that Femke can be tougher. 

Rosaline on board 2 will also have to take someone much stronger than her on paper. Luckily, last time I checked, she’s the kind of person who gets positions where she can checkmate such players. How this woman never even plays online, yet manages such performance remains a mystery to me. 

I myself am with the white pieces on board 3. While my chess ego comes and goes, I intend to get the most out of this game. I have no clue who my opponent is and I blindly assume he’s gonna be somewhere around my level, if we are to believe the line up of their previous game. Little did I know that Menno actually kicks much stronger asses on a regular basis in the 2nd division of the KNSB. 

On board 4, it is the first match-up with ratings in our favor (well, by 3 points), but that is not what I appreciate there. Sophie just recently became a mom, and uses some very precious time to be there for the sisters. When I ask if she’d go for a quick draw to limit the fatigue, she immediately replies with “of course not, I want to win this”. I told you this community was awesome.

After our former captain, sits our current one. There again the rating difference doesn’t seem to be in our favor. But I’ve just recently witnessed over 20 experienced sissa players breaking their head together over a checkmate-in-6 puzzle without solving it. Why am I mentioning this? Because these 6 moves got played effortlessly by Nouschkijn-the-engine last year in one of her first games. 

Last but not least, we have Ilse on board 6, making her very first debut within the sisters. Now I haven’t seen her play a lot of regular chess yet, but I recently got the truly humbling experience of being destroyed (can someone heal my soul?) by her in fisher random twice in a row, before she’d professionally kick some more asses at hands and brains. 

So on paper, ~150 rating points in favor of Bedum. In reality, I have hopes that we’ll perform better than against our very own SISSA3. Regardless of the results, what I always enjoyed with this team is the enthusiasm to play together, and what always mattered for the sisters was to enjoy the ride.

Speaking of ride, the one thing I regret with our current team is that the influx of new members didn’t come with an influx of cars. While Femke decided to brave the November weather on her bike (yikes), Ilse, Nouschka, Rosaline and I decided to be slightly less brave and to take the train. It turned out to be absolutely lovely, and the (also lovely) 12-minutes-walk between Bedum’s train station and the playing hall was the perfect opportunity to discuss future plans in life. @Olaf I hope you enjoy Bedum too, because you’re probably moving there soon.

We arrive at the venue, and it seems vaguely familiar. Last time I was here, we lost in blitz the semi-finale of the <1650 NOSBO beker. Boards are still being set, while free coffee, tea and cakes are being showed to us. Did I mention already that everything in Bedum was lovely?

The pink queens take place between the boards and the sissa queens take place behind the boards. Yes, I’m going for this phrasing, sue me.

The room gets fuller and it becomes clear quickly enough that it is not in Bedum that we’ll get any recruit for damesschaak. 

The clocks start together with the games, or maybe it’s the other way around. 

I spend the first 30 minutes reflecting on life (there is cake), love (should I get some cake?) and death (let’s not have cake) and trying to recall why I used to be so scared of the sicillian. After some mitigated attempts of walking around the other chess boards, I decide to stay still for a while, and to pretend I can build a relevant opinion on the “despicable waste” foto exibitie on display in the room. If anyone reading me is into photography, I’d actually be curious to hear your thoughts on these compositions.

Now, for those of you actually reading for the chess (actually, what are we primarily writing reports for?), I’m happy to also offer some commentary. 

On board 6, Ilse seems to play patiently and develops her pieces carefully. I never know what to think whenever I watch a new teammate playing their first game. What is she comfortable playing? The little castle she built for her king in the middle of the board seems unorthodox but extremely functional, especially considering that her opponent is far from having a good development. Her own pieces are more active but also more uncoordinated. All the pawns on that board seem to be enjoying a mind of their own. Time passes and slowly the white pawns coordinate to take away squares from Ilse. After the white pieces get activated, she has to come up with a way to defend against a fork targeting her king and her bishop. She audaciously does so with her rook. Audaciously, because it takes some nerves to hang your rook, realize it after your opponent misses it, and actively decide to bluff your way with that position for the next few moves. Maintaining a poker face and trying to get a psychological advantage over your opponent? @Edim, Ilse might just very well be the perfect player for you to train.
This time, she unfortunately could not make it out of this game, but she showed resilience, resources, and enthusiasm. Isn’t that a sissa-sister recipe? 

On board 5, Nouschkalm plays her usual opening moves, but enters a line that I believe she hasn’t encountered before. For her who’s a better attacker than a defender, it doesn’t help that her opponent is playing aggressively. It reassures me to see that she takes her time before every move she makes, and after every breath she takes I’m pretty sure I am hearing her singing a song in her head. @Niels, seems like you’re de trucjes man with the best non-chess advices for chess.
Unfortunately, her apparent calm is not enough to avoid her opponent infiltrating her position. She loses a jellyfish (try explaining in Dutch class why you learnt sea animal vocabulary at chess), but looks for counterplay on the king side, with a strong queen-bishop battery on the long diagonal. Helaas, she misses that the pawn consolidating her bishop would become the reason said-bishop gets trapped. I would love to say that after that the game got crazy and that she had a super strong comeback, that her queen standing in the long diagonal created a bloodbath, and for everyone to beware of Nouschker-the-butcher. But in reality, I actually cowardly stopped visiting that board, and started to focus more on the one I actually had control over. Nonetheless, in my heart, she only lost the point because she decided to show mercy. What a Nouschqueen.

2 boards out, 4 to go. 

On board 4, Sophie is strongly following the recipe laid-out by our teammates. She gets a queen/bishop battery. She doesn’t castle. She lets a piece hanging for 3 moves because she has better things to do. I never thought I’d reach the point in chess where most of my stress comes from watching my teammates. They all make it so fascinating and terrifying. In the case of Sophie, I must say that it is mostly fascinating. Everything coordinate so beautifully. When she finally stops hanging her piece, she gives a pawn, which immediately improves her position. When the white rook gets in the way of her queen, she doesn’t care because she gets to keep building the pressure by doubling her rooks on the open h file. Analysis revealed that her attack could have been defendable, but I don’t think there’s yet an engine that computes the psychological despair that comes with defending such positions. 

Being an admirable woman, mom and chess player, Sophie does it all. Do NOT underestimate the sisters. @Sjoerd, this might be a lesson you recall from the 2024 SISSA-off.

1-2

Rosaline’s opponent leans towards mine. « Mag ik remise aanbieden? ». I struggle describing the conflicting thoughts that arrive to me all at once after hearing this: 

Rosaline is down a pawn. 

We are 2 hours into the games. 

I’m pretty sure they have only played 10 moves so far. 

He has no active pieces besides his queen. 

He’s much higher rated than Rosaline. 

After this, Femke and me would need to score at the very least 1.5. 

If anything, I’m glad that it’s not my decision to make. And also, I’m very happy for my teammate. She hates playing with black, she faced an unusual opening (at least, from where I was seated it looked unsual), against a strong opponent. So few moves and yet so much tension was built (at least mine). Can we even say that they reached the middle game yet? The draw is agreed upon, reinforcing my belief that Rosaline is just unable to ever lose a game when it comes to the sisters. 

On board 3, I started the game gaining some space and piece activity. I followed through the few plans I have, and as mentioned previously, my biggest source of stress didn’t come from my game but from watching pieces being left hanging left and right beside me (mostly left). Or maybe from the too many coffee I drunk today. Be mindful to not overstimulate your cortisol production, people.

I ask myself a few times if I should be playing for a draw, but always reach the conclusion that I can play a few more moves to see how it goes. During the analysis, Menno made it clear that he was anyway playing for nothing short of a win, considering that he assumed (rightfully so) that he was the stronger player. This was all unbeknownst to me, and I was just focusing on poking my pieces around until something might emerge. 

Don’t trade queens early on. Don’t blunder. Be mindful of pawn structure but even more mindful of piece activity. 

And for 30 moves and 2.5 hours I play possibly my cleanest game to date. 0 blunder, 0 mistake, 0 inaccuracy, and I’m 15 minutes ahead of him.

Reaching the endgame, I am slightly concerned that it will be easier for him to play than for me, but I decide to be full of myself and to assume I can at the very least defend this. He attacks my knight with his pawn, and after thinking for a while, I play my 31st move. 

…

This instantly and very obviously loses me a rook. 

…

And the game. 

…

And seals the win for our opponents.

…

…

This was my cleanest game to date…

…And my most painful blunder ever. 

This report is honestly not pleasant to write. But I told Nouschcool that I would. 

And tbf, I can’t hate something that ended so badly if I am so happy with how it went until that point.

A bit of a déjà-vu…

Lesson I get from not staying home on a Tuesday evening? Some things you can never take back, and you’ll never know how it could have gone. Let’s try to not get haunted and only improve from this.

Femke is still playing, therefore, I lost but don’t resign right away. She has been playing an impressive game so far, with all the initiative and piece coordination in the world. Every time I watched her board tonight, I was actually speechless. Maybe because we’re not supposed to talk in the playing hall, but mostly because it looked really good for her. The least I could do was to prevent my loss disrupting her thought process. This venue is cozy but can be noisy. Finally, she presses the clock, comes look at my board, notices my lack of rook, and I resign. All eyes on her now. Her very solid middle game came at the cost of a lot of time, and when they enter their endgame, around 5 minutes remain on Femke’s clock while Roelof still has close to 20. She uses her knights admirably, but the strength of the bishop pair is undeniable. It’s over, but props to her for playing so remarkably for so long. There’s nothing much better I can say than this direct quote from Femke «  I played a very good game that ended in the expected result. No shame in that.». And she’s right. 

We help cleaning up, we missed our train and the next one is in an hour. Luckily, Menno offers to drive us back to Groningen.  Didn’t I say that people in Bedum were lovely?

So we go home, once again with the score of 1.5-4.5. It’s technically the same score that we got against SISSA3, but against a much stronger team. I’m not sure if that says something about us, or about our club mates. 

Now, rendez-vous in the DSC on the 28th of November for more SISSA sisters making their debuts!

By Aurore 🌺