The 21st edition of the annual European Club Cup took off on Saturday in Fuegen, a well-known, hilly ski resort in Austria. The event drew a record number of 56 participating teams from all over the continent, including incumbent Russian side Tomsk-400. Polonia Warsaw and NAO Paris, silver and bronze medal winners from 2005, did not arrive.

The line-ups include a/o 124 GMs and 85 IMs. Russia, who are looking for their fifth ECC win ever, hold a tight grip on the competition as they fielded five of six top seeded teams. The following are seeded with top numbers:
1. Ural Sverdlovsk
2. Elara Cheboksary (a newly established team)
3. Tomsk-400
4. TPS Saransk
5. Ashdod CC (Israel)
6. Ladya Kazan

Top seeded players are Petr Svidler of Ural (2741), Vasyl Ivanchuk, who left Polonia to play for TPS (2734) and Alex Morozevich of Tomsk-400 (2731). Other notable names include Shirov, Navara, Gelfand, Radjabov, Grischuk, Bareev, Van Wely and many more. The event saw two non-union teams which are actually from Kosovo, the just emerging Balkan state and the Belfast CC, also unlabelled, fielded by recently independent Ulster Chess Union (previously part of Irish CF).

Three teams, namely Bank King of Armenia, SF Reichenstein of Switzerland and Sollentuna of Sweden won their opening round matches 6-0 to take joint lead after round 1.

The women's competition attracted just 11 teams (including four from Russia and one from newcomers Montenegro), while NTN Tbilisi of Georgia, winners from 2004 and 2005 are missing. Best players are Pia Cramling and Maia Chiburdanidze. AVS Krasnoturinsk, the top rated team lost their round one match vs Mika Yerevan of Armenia.

Both events are seven round Swisses with men playing on six boards and women playing on four boards. Final order is decided by match points, then game points, then Buchholz.

More reports to follow as the games will progress.

Home page: http://www.ecc2006.com