The 25th European Club Cup was held on 4-10th October in Ohrid, Fyrom. The Russian club Economist-SGSEU-1 from Saratov won all seven matches and convincingly claimed the first place with perfect 14 points. This compact team was represented by Grandmasters Alekseev, Eljanov, Tomashevsky, Bu, Ni, Moiseenko, Andreikin and Roiz. The Championship was very exciting, but with 50+ teams competing, it should be definitely extended to nine rounds.

Mika Yerevan, featuring mostly members of the Olympiad winning Armenian national team, reached clear second place with 12 points. It is interesting that last year the same team had Magnus Carlsen and Boris Gelfand on the top two boards, yet they finished on tied 7-13th place.

Third place was shared by the last year champions Ural Svedrdlovskaya, this time playing without Teimour Radjabov and Gata Kamsky, and SPbChFed from Sankt-Peterburg, but Ural took bronze medal on better tiebreak score. Peter Svidler from SPbChFed scored 5.5/7 on the first board, for the highest rating performance of the competition - 2920.

1. RUS Economist-SGSEU-1 Saratov - 14
2. ARM Mika Yerevan - 12
3. RUS Ural Svedrdlovskaya - 11
4. RUS SPbChFed Sankt-Peterburg - 11
5. GER OSG Baden-Baden - 10

In the women's section Vidnoe had a slow start, with draws in rounds two and three, but then they won the remaining matches and convincingly claimed the trophy, full three points ahead of the chasing pack. Fourth board Kateryna Lahno had an amazing performance of 5.5/6, or 2772 elo.

Cercle d'Echecs Monte Carlo, who dominated the European scene over the last two years, had many problems throughout the competition and only in the last round did they reach shared 2-5th place. The team won the silver medal on the best additional criteria. It is interesting that the top two teams haven't met each other over the board.

The event had only 11 teams participating, which is a huge decline after the last year's 18 in Kalithea.

1. RUS Spartak Vidnoe - 12
2. MNC Cercle d'Echecs Monte Carlo - 9
3. GEO Samaia Tbilisi - 9
4. RUS Economist-SGSEU Saratov - 9
5. MNE T-com Podgorica - 9

/ taken from www.chessdom.com /

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