Louis Van Vliet

Louis van Vliet (c. 1868 – 15 June 1932) was a Dutch chess master.

He took 4th at Amsterdam 1889 (Amos Burn won), 6-8th at London 1889 (Henry Edward Bird won), took 19th at Manchester 1890 (the 6th British Chess Federation Congress, Siegbert Tarrasch won), took 2nd, behind Rudolf Loman, at London 1891, took 10th at London 1891 (Bird won), took 9th at London 1892 (Emanuel Lasker won), took 5th at London 1893 (Joseph Henry Blackburne won), tied for 2nd-3rd at London 1896 (Richard Teichmann won).

He tied for 3rd-4th and took 5th at London 1900 (Teichmann won), took 6th (William Ewart Napier won) and 5th at London 1904 (Teichmann won), tied for 27-28th at Ostend 1907 (B tournament, Ossip Bernstein and Akiba Rubinstein won). Louis van Vliet lost the only game played with Dr. Walter Romain Lovegrove in London in 1912.

His most notable win was a 24 move victory against Emanuel Lasker at Amsterdam 1889. Within less than a year, Lasker would be the number one ranked player in the world for the next twelve years, according to the website Chessmetrics.com. van Vliet's best known loss came against Aron Nimzowitsch at Ostend 1907. Nimzowitsch annotated it for his work The Blockade and- with revised annotations- his classic work Chess Praxis, where Nimzovich pointed out a positional queen sacrifice that van Vliet could have played that Nimzo believed would have allowed van Vliet to hold a draw. In fact, even this would not have saved van Vliet, as indicated by such modern chess engines as Fritz and Rybka.

Van Vliet died in London on 15 June 1932.