Jorden van Foreest
Jorden van Foreest is a Dutch chess grandmaster and a chess professional. Jorden was born on April 30 1999, in Utrecht and grew up in Groningen in a family with a strong chess tradition. His great-great-grandfather Arnold van Foreest was Dutch champion in 1889, 1893 and 1902 (and Arnold’s brother Dirk was also a three-time Dutch champion, in 1885, 1886 and 1887!).
Already at a young age Jorden showed a prodigious talent for the game and in 2010 he won the U-10 Open Dutch Youth Championship. In 2013 he finished first in the U-14 European Youth Championship.
At the age of 16, Jorden earned the Grandmaster title at the World Juniors and he capped the year 2015 with a win in his home town, in the Groningen Open. The next year, at 17, he became Dutch Chess Champion. Only Anish Giri won the national championship at a younger age, at age 15 in 2009.
In 2017 Jorden finished second behind Giri at the Reykjavik Open and in that same year he won the Dutch Rapid Championship.
In the past years his ambition has been to be a 2700 player and various times he crossed the magic 2700 barrier to be among the elite group that are often called ‘super-grandmasters’.
Jorden’s biggest triumph so far was his win in the 2021 Tata Steel Chess Tournament, ‘the Wimbledon of Chess’, where he defeated Giri in a hectic blitz tiebreak. In that same year World Champion Magnus Carlsen asked him to be part of his team for the Norwegian’s world title match against Ian Nepomniachtchi.
Further successes include first place in the 2021 Sigeman Tournament in Malmö, and first place in the Rapid section of the 2022 Croatia leg of the Grand Chess Tour (ahead of Carlsen).
In 2023 he won the Bydgoczsz Invitational, ahead of a.o. Vasyl Ivanchuk, and finished second in the Dutch Championship, losing the tiebreak to Anish Giri.
One of the highlights in 2024 will be the Chess Olympiad in Budapest in September, where Jorden will play on Board 2 of the Dutch team behind Giri.
On the occasion of Jorden’s victory at the 2021 Tata Steel Chess Tournament, New In Chess published the following profile of the Van Foreest ‘chess family’.
A Chess Family
Jorden van Foreest belongs to a family with a rich chess tradition. His great-great-grandfather Arnold van Foreest (b.1863) was a three-time Dutch champion, and so was his older brother Dirk van Foreest (b.1862). Dirk, who is believed to have been the stronger player, had a shorter career, because he gave up competitive chess after completing his medical studies. He continued to play correspondence chess, however. Both were prominent promoters of the game in the early years of the Dutch Chess Federation (founded in 1873) and both held the presidency. And both remained attached to the game till the end of their long lives, Dirk passing away at the age of 93 and Arnold at 90.
Arnold van Foreest (1863-1954)
Dirk van Foreest (1862-1956)
Just like his ancestors, Jorden is a jonkheer, the lowest Dutch noble title, comparable to ‘squire’. Perhaps his most famous ancestor was Petrus van Foreest (1521-1597), whose father’s name was Jorden(!). Petrus was known as ‘the Dutch Hippocrates’ and served as a physician to the forefather of the royal family of the Netherlands, William of Orange (1533-1584), ‘the Father of the Fatherland’.
While chess always remained a cherished pastime in the Van Foreest family, competitive successes only returned with the latest generation. Jorden and his five siblings all play chess. They learned the game while their parents home-schooled them, believing that the regular education system is not challenging enough. Still, the choice was (and is) up to the children, and they could attend school if they chose to. In 2017, the Van Foreest family and their passion for chess was the subject of a documentary on Dutch television.
Jorden (1999) is the oldest and most successful chess player of the family, but he is not the only one with exceptional results. Lucas (2001) became a GM at 17 and is the reigning Dutch champion after defeating Jorden (!) in the tiebreak of the 2019 Championship. Machteld (2007) is the only girl and is seen by some as the most talented chess player of the family. In 2018 she was the highest rated U12 girl in the world. She was only 11 years old when she finished third in the Dutch women’s championship in 2019.
