In de slotronde van het Nederlands kampioenschap 1957 in Utrecht heeft Henk Beeke (l.) zojuist 66...49-44!! gespeeld. Kort erna kan witspeler Geert van Dijk opgeven en grijpt daarmee net naast de titel.
Photograph: Nationaal Archief
break-out 1 Van Dijk - Beeke
van Dijk Geert Evert - Beeke Henk (09-03-1957)
But before I introduce the game in question, I must first share the following. Until the fall of 1965, I kept a record—perhaps to gauge exactly where I stood in my career, or maybe just for fun—of all the Dutch Championship finalists I had managed to defeat. When I stopped this habit, I realized that in just two and a half years (June 25, 1963 – December 11, 1965), I had collected exactly fifteen scalps. My most prominent victims included—strictly in chronological order—Wim van der Sluis (Amsterdam Championship 1964), Ed Holstvoogd (North Holland Club Competition 1964), Freek Gordijn (Dutch Championship 1965), Wim de Jong (North Holland Championship 1965), Henk Laros (same tournament), Wim Roozenburg (Club Competition 1965), and Cees Varkevisser (North Holland vs. South Holland 1965). However, this does not even mention the biggest catch I landed during that period: at the Brinta Tournament 1965 (Hoogezand-Sappemeer), I defeated the newly crowned, yet former world champion, Shchegolev!
Yet, Wim van der Sluis—the Amsterdam master from whom I had learned an incredible amount in those early years—was not my first scalp. On Tuesday, June 18, just fifteen days after the GS Youth Tournament, the Summer Competition had started at the weekly club evening of Gezellig Samenzijn, held in the AMVJ building (Vondelstraat/Stadhouderskade). After winning against J.J. de Wit in the opening round, I was paired in the second round against none other than J.H. Beeke(!).
Henk Beeke (1928–1990) was the youngest of two sons of Leendert Beeke, a board member of the Weesper Draughts Club. He was also, without question, the most gifted of the two. Not that Henk's older brother, Willem Cornelis Beeke (1917-1998), who also reached the final rounds of the Dutch Championship in 1956 and 1962, was not also a strong and impressive player. I would experience this firsthand when, after starting the 1964 Amsterdam Championship with a perfect 10 out of 5(!), I was harshly brought back down to earth by Wim Beeke. In a turbulent, Keller-esque encounter, he inflicted a defeat that planted my feet firmly back on the ground—resulting in me ultimately having to contest a double tiebreaker (two sets of three games!) against Lex den Doop to fight for the title...
Henk Beeke, however, played in no fewer than six Dutch Championships (1955–1957 and 1961–1963) and achieved significantly better results than his brother. He never scored below “+1,” and in 1955, 1957, and 1962, he even finished with “+2.” Of the 77 championship games he played during that period, he won fifteen and lost only six. This image of a player who may not have been highly productive but was exceptionally solid is fully supported by Beeke’s performance in the GS Jubilee Tournament of 1957. In that strong eight-player field, he defeated Wim de Jong and remained undefeated against all other opponents, including Keller, Herman de Jongh, Wim Roozenburg, and the surprising tournament winner, Hisard.
To give the reader an impression of the untrained yet highly talented draughts player that Beeke was in my eyes, I have included below the—mostly uncommented—game that he won against Geert van Dijk(!) on the final day of the 1957 Dutch Championship.
G. van Dijk – J.H. Beeke
Dutch Championship 1957
(Utrecht, March 9, 1957)
The beautiful photo preserved from the above game was unknown to me until recently, but it strikingly confirms the image I have of both players. While Beeke has nearly exhausted all his thinking time, Van Dijk still has more than thirty minutes left for his last moves until the next time control. Although I cannot say for sure what the exact time control was (in the 1961 Dutch Championship, after the first time control on the 50th move, the players were given half an hour for the next 15 moves; see also "Jan Bom - dammer" (Utrecht 2002), page 194), it is clear that Van Dijk played significantly faster than his opponent. This aligns perfectly with a statement Van Dijk made when he was interviewed by Jan Wielaard in Dammen 35 (June 1988). When Wielaard asked why he had 'only' become Dutch champion once, Van Dijk responded:
“The main reason was that I failed at decisive moments.”
He further explained:
“You have people with a negative fear of failure. They run away from difficulties. In draughts, this shows up by playing quickly in critical moments. But you also have people with a positive fear of failure. Among draughts players, these are the ones who keep puzzling through difficult situations, and, of course, end up in great time trouble. I belong to the first type of fearful players. Thus, Van Dijk in 1988, who also remarked that he had “messed up the situation in the last round many times.”
This was particularly true for the final round of the 1957 Dutch Championship, where a draw against Beeke would have secured him the title. Van Dijk ended up sharing first place with Wim Roozenburg—the older (half) brother of Piet Roozenburg—after which Roozenburg was declared champion based on a better Sonneborn-Berger (SB) score... This rule was, however, scrapped the following year. When Van Dijk and Keller finished the 1958 Dutch Championship on 20 points from 14 rounds, a ‘double’ tiebreak of two sets of three games was held. Van Dijk won the fifth, penultimate game, thus securing his first and only national title. As for Keller, for whom this was the last Dutch Championship of his long and impressive career, his tally would forever remain at 13 (!) Dutch titles—a record that has yet to be surpassed to this day...
Let’s now return to the scene depicted in the above photo. In stark contrast to Van Dijk, Beeke seems to have made optimal use of his ‘thinking time.’ This aligns perfectly with the memories I have of him and his way of playing. Beeke almost always ended up in time trouble. But the remarkable thing was that, except for a few rare occasions, he still produced the strongest moves! (In this sense, one could call the incorrect 59...12-17 in his game against Van Dijk “atypical.” But at the same time, it is fair to acknowledge that despite the reduced material, it was by no means an easy situation. The variations to calculate were long and quite branched out. Moreover, it is not for nothing that in the 1957 Dutch Championship booklet, a question mark is missing after White’s 57th and Black’s 59th moves (a mistake by Keller), as one will also fruitlessly search for critical commentary on these moves on page 312 of the 1986 "Jubilee Book 75 years KNDB")...
One image has stuck with me my whole life from an away match (April 25, 1964) against Huissen. I no longer remember who Beeke played that day, and unfortunately, the game is not available in any database. Since Henk Kemperman—who according to Toernooibase was paired with P.G. van Hout—and Piet Levels—my opponent—are not to be counted, I suspect it was players like Jan Edink, Bart van Aalten, or Maarten Storm. But it could have been anyone, honestly.
What is absolutely certain, however, is that Beeke was once again in a furious time trouble. And when the smoke cleared after the 50th move, only a thin position (4x4, at most 5x5) remained in which the favorable opposition guaranteed him the win in all variations! The essence of that position has always stayed with me: it consisted of the voluntarily accepted lock of three White pieces on 30, 34, and 35 versus three Black pieces on 19, 24, and 25. (Most likely, it was once again, like in 1957 against Van Dijk, a classical-style maneuver with a minority attack on the enemy's right wing.)
Unfortunately, I have never managed to reconstruct the exact position from that Huissen competition game. Every attempt in that direction seems doomed to fail from the start. A systematic investigation reveals that even with only four pieces on each side, and with Black’s only playable piece being restricted from the fields 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 14, 15, 20, 18, and 23, there are still about sixty winning positions possible! (I would rather not think about the number of possible winning positions in the case of a 5x5 position...)
[Click here to go to break-out 2 (Beeke-Van Dijk 1963).]
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