Some impressions from the 50th OKU tourney June 2025 Utrecht (NL)

OKU tourney is organized by Paul Keres chess club in Utrecht, Holland. It's a chess club where I once was a proud member of. The tournament location was this time in Papendorp, a rather new part of Utrecht area. Despite the strong wind I managed to bike there from the train station. On the way there I saw a huge sign at a car road with generic information of the chess tournament, a professional approach! The location was a beautiful designed school with lots of space for the chess players. At the entrance there were lots of chess books for sale by a local chess player. The atmosphere was very good. The amount of tournament officials from Paul Keres was almost overwhelming. Not just a small scale tourney where it is hard to find an official when you need them. Also at the entrance were the digital chess boards to view. A, B and C group top boards could be followed by spectators.
I noticed that in group A there were many GMs, IMs, FMs and CMs but they were all from the Netherlands. No Germans, no Indians, and not the Bulgarian GM that lives in Holland who played at OKU years ago. What I also noticed was the amount of young players at the top boards and close to the top boards. Young IM Arthur de Winter was there, but also father and son Grooten, father IM Herman Grooten (well-known name in Holland because of his training material, videos and books) and son Tommy Grooten. Last time I read about Tommy Grooten he was playing in the same competition team with his father with some successes but this time Tommy's rating is almost 2300, higher than that of his father. A good sign for his progress! In the last round GM Thomas Beerdsen won his game pretty soon. When I looked at the boards I saw that IM Jan-Willem v/d Griendt was a pawn down. After arriving home it turned out that Jan-Willem had, with some luck, won his game in mutual time trouble, and became the official winner of the tourney.
OrganizerJan Jaap Janse is thanking all the volunteers who made the tournament possible here on this page : https://oku.paulkeres.nl/?p=3746

Lichess did a broadcast, see here : https://lichess.org/broadcast/open-kampioenschap-van-utrecht--groep-a/round-6/c8CpocU8#boards

There's also the live DGT boards here : https://oku.paulkeres.nl/?page_id=806 (I can imagine that this live DGT link will not be permanent and removed after some months).

Last but not least it was nice to see old chess friends and old fellow chess club members. Way to go! Thank you Paul Keres chess club!

I'm including a game by GM Erik v/d Doel from the last round. A flawless game according to Lichess Stockfish and perhaps kind of fun to look at.