Jorden van Foreest and his sister Machteld emerged victorious in the Dutch National championships recently and he is chuffed having done so.

The brother-sister duo is probably the Netherlands’ answer to the more famous siblings from Chennai — R. Praggnanandhaa and R. Vaishali.

“They (Pragg and Vaishali) are a bit better. It is very special when you have two siblings playing. They(Pragg and his sister) are both GMs and the first ones to play in the Candidates tournament. They are truly a special family,” the 26-year-old van Foreest said during an interaction.

The Dutchman, who is in the city to take part in the Quantbox Chennai Grandmasters along with his seasoned compatriot Anish Giri, is delighted about his second National title and says chess pretty much runs in his family.

“I have been playing chess since I was six years old. When I started playing, I had no idea that the sport rain in the family. It was a funny coincidence that my great-grandparents used to play chess. They were playing some 130 years ago,” he said.

He said his younger brother Lucas and he worked quite a bit on the game and added that “Some time, I help my sister, whenever she needs it.”

About how the sport is shaping in the Netherlands, van Foreest said it is not as big as it is in India.

“For a small country, we have good history. We had a world champion (Max Euwe), Jan Timman was there… We don’t have any up-and-coming talent now as far as I can see right now.”

Inspiration

Asked if he looked up to countryman Anish, van Foreest said, he sure was an inspiration and Anish was already a GM when he was growing up.

The star said he followed a bit of tennis but not football as much and added that he liked Novak Djokovic and current World No. 1 Jannik Sinner.