Sjakkfantomet

Arctic Chess Challenge 2009 has now 14 GMs and 15 IMs and I will present all GMs here at my blog as part of the profiles for the tournament pages. We will even take a look at some of the IM's and first out is IM Bjørn Tiller which plays all kind of interesting openings that often gives his games a certain flavour of originality. You can also read IM Torstein Bae's two profiles of IM Ray Robson and IM Torbjørn Ringdal Hansen at the official Tromsø 2014 site. Here's my profile of Tiller:

Bjørn Tiller was born in Oslo in 1959 and his subject is philosophy. He is a member of Oslo Schakselskap, the largest and strongest chess club in Norway. He had a long break without competitive chess in the late 80's and the 90's before he returned to tournament chess. His primetime over the chess board was the early 80s when he was playing as a 1st reserve for Norway in the Chess Olympics in Valletta, Malta in 1980 with the strong score of 75% score over 8 games. He also participated in the Olympics in 1976.

In 1982 he was awarded the International Master title (IM), and the same year he lost a tiebreak-match with the young Simen Agdestein - after shared victory at the Norwegian Championship. But in 1983 it was Tiller's time, he then won his one and only Norwegian Championship. Tiller is known as an excellent blitz-player from his club in Oslo where he is a real shark. He qualified to Glitnir Blitz Norway 2007, a super strong blitz-tournament with Magnus Carlsen and Grischuk, by winning quite a strong field in the qualifications in Oslo.

Internationally Bjørn Tiller is probably best known in Great Britain where he plays for Wood Green 2 in the Four Nations Chess League (4NCL). He is also a frequent guest at the open international tournament in Davos, Switzerland, where he got two second places from the years 2003 and 2006. Tiller can be described as a typical positional player who usually plays in the spirit of hyper-modernism - with at least one fianchetto bishop. Anyway, he often opens his games with 1.e4, but typically he then chooses the closed Sicilian and so. But he is also quite an romatic that can pull up a Kings Gambit if times are right. Tiller has quite a few ideas of his own already in the opening play that always makes it interesting to go over his games.

Let's take a look at a nice mating combination from the time Bjørn Tiller was at his heights: