Erwin l’Ami is in top form in this championship. He is playing with total control, and seems to instill fear in his opponents with his imperturbable technique. Today he pushed, from an equal position, Roeland Pruijssers slowly but with lethal infallibility into the abyss. The grandmaster from Woerden has now won all his five games at this Dutch Championship, but said that this still doesn’t mean anything: ‘In a knockout tournament like this things can still go wrong.’

The second semifinal game, between Max Warmerdam and Robby Kevlishvili, ended in a draw after a heavy struggle. Warmerdam built up an initiative, but after he made a mistake, Kevlishvili could have obtained good winning chances. Later, it was Warmerdam who missed an excellent chance, after which Kevlishvili saved the half point quite skilfully.

The Women’s Championship was, again, very spectacular today. Machteld van Foreest crushed the leader, Eline Roebers, in an attractive and daring attacking game. Roebers missed some chances at a better defence, but it’s exceedingly difficult in such positions. This victory put Van Foreest in the sole lead since Anne Haast went down after a hit-and-miss game with Maaike Keetman. Anna-Maja Kazarian made up for her bad start in the tournament with a powerful victory over Robin Duson.

In the University Challenge match between Jonas Hilwerda and John van der Wiel, as well as the Talent Match between Erik Hoeksema and Leandro Slagboom, there was not much fighting going on. The latter game very quickly ended in a draw; Hilwerda and Van der Wiel took longer, but the equilibrium was never really disturbed.

There were also many draws in the Groningen Open. Hagen Poetsch called it a day very early against colleague grandmaster Alexander Kovchan. Nico Zwirs and Pranav Anand put up more of a fight, but they too were evenly matched. Sjoerd van Roon won an exchange against the German master Valentin Buckels, but the latter defended tenaciously, and also saved the half point. Anand and Poetsch remain in the lead with 5 points each, Zwirs and Kovchan are trailing by half a point. Besides Van Roon, the Slovakian IM Stefan Macak, Nick Maatman and Tim Grutter are now shared fifth – all three of them won today.