The participants of the Dutch Championship had another day off today; on this Boxing Day, the so-called Compact Groups started, as well as two matches: the University Challenge between grandmaster John van der Wiel and the Dutch Junior Champion of 2021 Jonas Hilwerda from Groningen, and the Talent Match between Internationaal Master Erik Hoeksema and the sixteen-year-old Leandro Slagboom. John van der Wiel won a pawn pretty quickly, but that was not enough for the full point; because of the opposite-coloured bishops on the board, Hilwerda was never in danger. But Hoeksema was against Slagboom, who set up the game in a highly original but also strong way. When in the third hour the complications came, White turned out to have many more options than Black, and the experienced Hoeksema had to cash in a zero.

In the A-Group, the Junior World Champion U16, Pranav Anand, just keeps winning. Today he beat Midas Ratsma with a wonderful trick. It wasn’t extremely hard to find, but it just seems to come so naturally with the fifteen-year-old Indian – which is a great art. The only player to whom Anand has conceded half a point so far, the German grandmaster Hagen Poetsch, linked up by an, again, attractive win with Black against Stefan Macak. The Apeldoorn master Nico Zwirs remains in the slipstream of the leading duo after a solid win against the fourteen-year-old top talent Arthur de Winter.