The Starry Night

Noted journalist Rob Gollin, in a report for de Volkskrant of January 18, 2021, narrated the “sorrows” of Jeroen van den Berg, Director of the so-called “Wimbledon of Chess” since 1999, who, never like this year, had to jump through hoops in order to put together a small number of human beings. And in the end, they were fourteen young men, but not without suspense. Just last Wednesday, Russian Grandmaster Daniil Dmitrievich Dubov had to withdraw in extremis due to a sudden high fever. On the same evening, van den Berg contacted German Grandmaster Alexander Anatolyevich Donchenko, and the next day the organisers sent a car with a driver to pick him up in Gießen. The indomitable van den Berg also hoped until the very last for the arrival of four-time Women’s World Chess Champion and Rhodes Scholar 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) — who has been playing here since her youth — but, unfortunately, she couldn’t leave China. And yet, despite all odds, van den Berg just did it: “I mostly had to limit myself to Europe, but look who’s here: the numbers one, two, five and eleven in the world, as well as rising stars and dark horses to form a dream field which promises many surprises”, he said.

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889. Courtesy of MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), New York.