On a dark and rainy December evening the team of Paard d4, consisting of Florian Jacobs, Walt Schagen, Gijs IJzermans and Laura Ratniece, visited the club Oosten-Toren in Diemen. It was the time for yet another round of the Amsterdam Cup. Oosten-Toren is a sympathetic club with lots of loyal club members. After some friendly chats we started the round fashionably late. Four ticking clocks and the occasional tuba sound from the floor below were all the sounds remaining, apart from the occasional mutterings from one chess player or another. Walt was the first one to win a game. His opponent opened with 1.b4, and Walt replied with 1…d5. By move 14, the players had neither castled, nor developed their pieces. However, Walt had already won a pawn with a nice combination involving …Nxd4. In the following moves Walt started a serious attack on his opponent’s king, and by move 20 his opponent resigned. Laura’s game was the second to end. Unfortunately, with a loss. Despite the result, the game was a good learning experience for Laura. She learnt that exchanging a knight and a bishop for a rook and a pawn is not always a good idea (especially if it happens on the square f2 and you spend too much time directing your pieces to that square). She fought valiantly afterwards, but her opponent’s bishops turned out to be too powerful. Florian’s game was the only one which complied with one of the ground principles of chess – “Centre-develop-castle-attack”. After solid and attacking moves, Florian managed to lure his opponent into a checkmate. …Nd4 was too nice a double attack not to play, but Florian had foreseen a nice trap. This meant the team had already won the match: the result on Laura’s board 4 would be annulled in case of a tie. Even an honourable draw was not to be gained by our esteemed opponents though, as Gijs played a solid game, in which he managed to coordinate his pieces very well. At some point, Gijs won an exchange, and shortly afterwards his opponent resigned. Paard d4 ended 2022 therefore on a high note. Onward and upward!