Utrecht Simuls in 88, Anyone?

I presume you did an web search first and already found this, but if not

http://mark_weeks.tripod.com/chw00j15/kasparov.htm

Lists Kaspy events, includes two simuls in Ned in 87, along with pgn files. Each file has only one game, one by Tim Krabbe(!), so perhaps he would be someone to ask for more details.

Yah, saw that page, thanks. We're pretty sure it was 88 because Vishy didn't win the world junior until August 87 and by that point Garry was prepping full time for the Seville WCh match and wouldn't have been giving simuls. We think. Hoping someone out there actually knows the Utrecht event. Maybe Krabbe can help.

Cross-posted the question at http://www.utrechtschaak.nl/ - an Utrecht forum which grew into a national chess forum.

Dear Mig, in 1987 the (then) Utrecht based publishing company Het Spectrum published 'Hoog spel', a Dutch translation of Kasparov's autobiography 'Child of Change'. Perhaps the simuls took place on the occasion of the presentation of the book?

I am pretty sure that the simul was given in order to celebrate the enlargment of the station hall of Utrecht Central Station, (it opened 28 april 1989. The simul took place in the station hall). I was there and I know that people who worked for the Dutch railroads were first to enter the simul. (My father worked for the railroads and a lot of his collegues entered... One of them was playing Anand, who around that time was still playing at blitz-tempo.)
I remembered that there was also a draughts-simul given by ex-worldchampion and 'draughts-legend' Ton Sijbrands.

Off topic, but why is the "tag cloud" invading the page? Your right-hand menu is covering a good 30 percent of the comment text.

Hi Mig,

I was actually at the simuls given in Utrecht bij Kasparov, Van der Wiel, Anand and I think Andersson as well. They didn't take place at the Utrecht Central Station, but at a shopping centre nearby, in the evening. I remember Tim Krabbé being one of the participants who played against Kasparov, who was racing past the boards at high tempo. The reason I remember Andersson is that the stories about simuls of his lasting until the early morning hours were being told with great relish. Now I'm not 100% sure if he was actually there or if he was just being mentioned to contrast him to the rapidly moving Kasparov and Anand.
I do remember the publication of his autobiography in Dutch, 'Hoog spel', also being part of the procedings. I'll have a look in my old documents to see if I can get an exact date.

It took a bit of rummaging around in some old boxes and drawers, but I found it: the simul was held on Wednesday evening, 27 April 1988. There were four GMs giving simuls: Kasparov, Anand, Timman and Van der Wiel.

I am 100% sure about this date (at least, my calendar from that year marks it as on that day, and that was the only time I saw Kasparov in Utrecht), so the game given by your link must be from another simul, although I do remember that I'd heard that Tim Krabbé had played Kasparov a few times in simuls around that time.

Hope that helps. Seems like old times, passing information through to you via the internet...

Mig: All the time. Windows XP professional, English, IE 6.0.

It;s happening on my PC also Mig, and it's quite annoying since I can't read a 3rd of the first 5-10 posts.

I have Windows XP PRO SP2 using IE 6.02900.2180 SP2.

Mig, I just e-mailed a screen shot of how the DD first page looks...

Thanks, Fré, the one-man world championship Dutch underground resistance! The spaghetti is on me any time you're in New York.

Browser trouble: Thanks, all. Sorry about the trouble. I'm assuming this is only happening to people using IE6, which is a horrible steaming pile of FIDE, if you'll pardon my language. To quote a respected designer:

"IE 6 is a very different animal from the other browsers or even the later incarnations of IE. Contrary to what you may expect, what works in IE 7, Opera, Firefox and Safari does not necessarily work in IE 6. It seems that IE 6 has a number of bugs in its CSS box model, causing sites that are correctly coded to break under that browser."

Scary, because the IE5 box was a nightmare... And this is almost certainly a CSS problem. If it turns out to be a simple thing to fix, great. If not, I'm not going to redo the page to compensate for IE6 failings. IE7 is readily available. It's also a good chance for y'all to upgrade to a much faster, more secure and more stable browser like Firefox, Opera, or Chrome. Seriously, IE is like using the cruddy headphones that came with your iPod or leaving in the picture of the family that came with the frame.

Anyway, I'll set up an IE6 emulator (like dipping your internet in acid just to see if it will still work) and fiddle around with it for a bit. Might be the cloud itself, but it might just be something around it. Maybe it's that rogue Nakamura tag! I can see it in an online emulator well enough to guess what it might be. Not sure about a quick fix tho'.

Thanks Mig. My PC is actually given by my employer to use at home for support. Unfortunately, I don't have the rights on this PC to upgrade any software :-(

I might take it to work to see our Help Desk could upgrade it to IE 7.0...

It's basically on IE 5, 5.5, and 6, which all have catastrophically bad CSS handling. It's the new cloud plugin. I can reproduce the problem on other pages using the plugin under the emulator. I'll let the designer know.

Saguni, if you can install programs in your pc, you could install Firefox or Opera. If not, i think there must be some kind of portable Firefox to use without installing, and with almost every feature. I'm not 100% sure if it's made by Mozilla themselves, but they have a portable Thunderbird as well so it makes sense.

Thanks Guys. I took the laptop to work and had the IE upgraded to 7.0 and the problem went away.