Khoi Pham Wins Blitz Tournament After Anish Giri's World-Class Tips & Tricks
Saturday 11 July
Peter Doggers
IM Khoi Pham won the Amsterdam Chess Festival's opening blitz tournament on Friday. After a close contest, Pham scored 11.5 points, half a point more than blitz specialist IM Hing Ting Lai. Earlier in the day, top GM Anish Giri's masterclass was well attended and provided the chess fans with useful tips for their opening preparation.
After 11 of the 13 rounds, Pham was sharing the lead with IM Eline Roebers. She had signed up for the blitz tournament at the last minute alongside e.g. WIM Robin Duson. Their participation was possible after their early elimination from the Dutch Women's Championships.
Lai was trailing the two by half a point, but couldn't overtake Pham, who finished strongly with two victories. He beat Roebers, and then also FM Vincent Blom, to clinch the first prize of 500 euros. Lai won 250 euros, while the third prize of 150 euros went to the Ukrainian FM Oleksandr Dovgaliuk, who was sporting a Rolling Stones T-shirt on the day that the legendary rock band released their 25th studio album.
A pleasant surprise among the participants was Nick de Firmian, who was among the top 50 in the world in the 1980s . The 68-year-old grandmaster from California is traveling in Europe to visit family, had found our tournament on the FIDE website and decided to sign up only a few days before the start. His score was 8.5/13, good for a shared 22nd place.
IM Merijn van Delft took fourth place and a group of seven players shared fifth: Blom, Roebers, IM Rob Schoorl, IM Nico Zwirs, FM Leandro Slagboom, Simeon Hoetink and CM Arne Moll.
Among the students, Pham and Lai took top prize as well in the Dutch Students Blitz Chess Championship sponsored by Optiver. They will be the first who can claim their ticket to the FISU World University Championships in China in October 2026. Because they already won the main prizes, Slagboom took the first student's prize while Mason Brouwer and Anastasiia Khatniuk shared second place among the students.
The tournament saw a number of small incidents that were all solved amicably but could serve as interesting cases at arbiter's exams. In one game, a player promoted to a queen but somehow ended up putting a new queen of the opponent's color on the board. He then successfully claimed an illegal move made by himself.
In another, someone wanted to castle and touched his king and then also his rook, saw that he would lose a piece, and decided to play a king move instead. His opponent also claimed successfully. As it turned out, the FIDE Laws of Chess mention that if both king and rook are touched, and castling is possible, one has to castle.
Anish Giri's Masterclass
The blitz tournament was held after an interesting masterclass given by top grandmaster Anish Giri, also sponsored by Optiver. Giri explained all the intricacies of top-level preparation with examples from the 2026 Candidates Tournament, in particular his Black game with Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and his White game with Fabiano Caruana.
The Q&A that followed was arguably even more interesting as Giri shared a lot of wisdom while answering a number of excellent questions from the audience. For instance, he discussed the well-known advice from chess trainers that it's very important to understand chess openings, and not just memorize them. "Understanding is always better than remembering," Giri said. "But sometimes you forget what you once understood! So you do have to repeat your openings regularly."
