Tilburg chess tournament

Anyone getting off to a slow start would be eliminated and sent home in just two or three days, such as happened to the entire Hungarian squad of Lajos Portisch, Gyula Sax, Zoltán Ribli, József Pintér and Peter Leko.

Those who did not win cleanly in the initial two games of each round found fatigue a great problem, due to having to give up their rest days.

At the opening ceremony, a spokesman for Interpolis shocked the audience with an announcement that the company was reconsidering its chess and other public relations activities, following a total merger with Rabobank.

The seeded players were Karpov (Elo rating 2780), Salov (2710), Ivanchuk (2695), Bareev (2695), Khalifman (2645), Epishin (2650), Timman (2635), and K. Georgiev (2615).

Garry Kasparov, Alexei Shirov, Artur Yusupov, Viktor Korchnoi, Joël Lautier, Boris Gelfand, Peter Leko and Tony Miles were among those who favoured the rival event.

Everyone was surprised to see the return of the Brazilian GM Henrique Mecking, a former world-class player, who had suffered a life-threatening condition some eighteen years previously and had been in a slow recovery ever since.

Held at the Interpolis headquarters, round one heralded the largest number of 'big reputation' casualties since the introduction of the knockout format.

Alexander Beliavsky, Victor Bologan, Mikhail Gurevich, Curt Hansen, Lembit Oll, Alon Greenfeld, Ilya Smirin, Veselin Topalov and home favourite Jeroen Piket all had to pack their bags after just three days.