Fred Das and Jeroen Terlingen, authors of The Sponsor: Murder at the North Sea Chess Tournament, teamed up again for The Sponsor Part II: The Marostica Chess Festival Under Attack. The first Sponsor book was published in 2024 and the second was published in 2026. I hope for a third Sponsor book in 2028.
From the Netherlands to Italy
In real life, top chess players fascinate fans, but sponsors are rarely discussed. Das and Terlingen have created a fictional sponsor who is a compelling character. For SparkChess, I reviewed The Sponsor: Murder at the North Sea Chess Tournament. My review concluded with, “I finished The Sponsor within 24 hours of starting it and enjoyed it immensely. Its ending left me guessing. Maybe, as with Tata Steel, there will be a sequel next year.” The “North Sea Chess Tournament” of the first book’s title is based on the Hoogovens-Corus-Tata Steel chess tournament held in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands.
The Sponsor Part II opens with Godfried Vos, the North Sea Chess Tournament sponsor from the first book, watching his friend Kolbeinn Halldórsson play in a tournament in Marostica, in the northern part of Italy. Most of “The Opening” section of the book is about Godfried being kidnapped and held captive by Andreas, who takes his name from a “well known Tyrolean patriot.”
Chess Easter Eggs
After doing some online research about South Tyrolean separatism, I returned to reading The Sponsor Part II. In the book’s “Middlegame” section, chess Easter eggs about the island of Grimsey, GM Timur Gareyev, and GM Ulf Andersson caught my attention.
Halldórsson takes the recently freed Godfried with him to the Icelandic island of Grimsey. I took a break from The Sponsor Part II to learn about Grimsey’s chess connections in Edward Winter’s Chess Notes. Winter writes the name as Grímsey and notes that Daniel Willard Fiske wrote about chess in Iceland, including on that island.
Godfried asks Gino, a policeman who was blinded by terrorists, if he is good at blindfold chess. Gino responds, “I’m no Timur Gareyev, who can beat 48 opponents at once while cycling on an exercise bike with a blindfold pulled over his eyes.” I first met GM Gareyev when he was playing chess in college. He is one of the players discussed in my book The United States College Chess Championship: A History of the President’s Cup.
Most of the players mentioned in The Sponsor Part II: The Marostica Chess Festival Under Attack are fictional. So, it was a treat to spot the names of those who are part of my chess world, like Gareyev and Andersson (see next paragraph). And I liked learning about new-to-me topics such as South Tyrolean separatism and the Icelandic island of Grímsey.
Halldórsson mentions an Ulf Andersson Memorial tournament. “What?” I thought to myself. “Is Andersson dead? I saw him at the 2025 World Senior Team Championship in Prague.” Saint Louis Chess Club issued press release (quoted in the next section) about Andersson being inducted this October into the World Chess Hall of Fame. Fortunately, he is alive to receive this honor!
Chess Legends to be Inducted into U.S. and World Chess Halls of Fame
October will bring another celebration of chess excellence to Saint Louis, with new members inducted into both the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame and World Chess Hall of Fame. The 2026 U.S. Chess Hall of Fame class will honor Montgomery Major and IM Jeremy Silman, while the World Chess Hall of Fame will welcome GMs Ulf Andersson, Boris Gelfand, Nana Ioseliani, Vasyl Ivanchuk and Alexandra Kosteniuk.
The U.S. Chess Hall of Fame induction ceremony and World Chess Hall of Fame induction of Boris Gelfand will take place Oct. 8 during the opening ceremony of the 2026 U.S. and U.S. Women’s Chess Championships, while the remainder of the World Chess Hall of Fame inductees will be honored during the closing of the 2026 Saint Louis Chess Conference on Oct. 24. Together, the seven inductees represent generations of excellence and enduring contributions to chess in the United States and around the world.
Chess Chow
This section’s heading is my own Easter egg, a reference to GM Joel Benjamin’s magazine (published from 1991 to 1994). A bio page about him states: He was editor in chief and founder of the witty but now defunct magazine Chess Chow (1991-4), which ran articles with titles like “Eat Like a Grandmaster”
Godfried and Gino consume tantalizingly named dishes and beverages, such as “Grilled radicchio from Treviso,” “Pistachio semifreddo,” “Torta della nonna,” and “Nocino – nut liqueur.” Readers don’t have to wonder about how those foods and drinks taste. An appendix has every recipe, from a to z, that was featured in the text.
While traveling through northern Italy in search of clues about Godfried’s kidnapping, Godfried and Gino eat many meals at restaurants. Not all the recipes are based on restaurants’ offerings. Godfried’s kidnapper Andreas is a great cook.
When still in captivity, Godfried tells Andreas that he could be “atopchefin a Michelin-star restaurant.” The first term in that phrase should be separated into four words: “a top chef in.” There are more than 30 such run-together terms in the Forward Chess eBook. I’ve notified New In Chess, so presumably the errors will be fixed soon.
Chess Games and Puzzles
Like recipes, chess games have their own appendix. In the header to Game 10, the Game of the Century between Donald Byrne and Bobby Fischer, Fischer is incorrectly listed as White. Scholar’s Mate was incorrectly translated as Shepherd’s Mate. I’ve sent those corrections to New In Chess too.
It’s possible to read The Sponsor Part II: The Marostica Chess Festival Under Attack without viewing its chess content. For each game or puzzle mentioned in the text, there is an endnote directing the reader to the chess games appendix. I ignored the endnotes, preferring to wait to play through the games and solve the puzzles until I finished reading the book. If I were not a chess player, I would have skipped the appendix and still enjoyed the book.
Most of the chess games and puzzles include brief descriptions of how they fit with the plot, which was usually enough to jog my memory without returning to the text. But if I had wanted to revisit the text, the appendix lists the page number associated with each chess game and puzzle.
Here is a puzzle created by Godfried:
Ordering Information
The Sponsor Part II: The Marostica Chess Festival Under Attack is published by New In Chess and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Its list prices are $19.95 (trade paperback) and $24.95 (hardcover). As mentioned, an eBook is available in English from Forward Chess. It was originally published in Dutch, and Forward Chess has the Dutch version too.
In one of the book’s storylines, Gino’s daughter auditions for a role in the famous living chess game of Marostica. If there were seven wonders of the chess world, Marostica would be one of them. The Sponsor Part II is the perfect book for your next chess vacation.
