Ružomberok, the city in central Slovakia, hosted the 33rd games of the annual Mitropa Cup: the chess tournament for Central European nations. While most federations decided to focus on promoting promising young players, the tournament enjoys wide interest and participation of many strong GMs. The permanent member of the cycle are Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. Poland are reserves and receive invitation in case somebody is missing.

In Open division Hungary, top seeds, took final win beating Germany by 2.5 to 1.5 in the decisive match of last round. GM Acs sealed his team's win in a nice ending vs IM Heimann to conclude with excellent 8/9. While Germany took silver, the home side Slovakia came in third (GM Michalik 7.5/9). Newcomers Poland led by 16-year old prodigy GM Duda finished in 7th.

Italy comfortably won (as usual) women's contest even though they lost to runners-up Germany 0.5-1.5 in round 8. While Austria were third, Hungary's 4th place was taken with 7 draws out of 9 rounds! Hungary's second board Melinda Varga scored 7.5/9 only to see her team-mate struggling at 1.5/9.

WIM Osmandoja of Germany in Women's tournament and GM Acs of Hungary scored 8/9 - top individual results.

See tournament website: http://mitropa.sachrbk.sk

Detailed results of 2014 Mitropa Cup: open and women
Mitropa Cup all-time summary: open and women
Mitropa Cup all-time statistics: open and women

The Asian Nations Cup for men and women took place from 20th to 30th May, 2014 in the city of Tabriz, Iran. The event was open to all chess federations in FIDE zones 3.1 to 3.7.

The Asian Nations Cup for men was a 10 team round-robin Team Championship, where each team consisted of 4 players plus 1 reserve. China and India shared first place with 16 points each, but China emerged winner on superior tie-break score. Vietnam, with the 2013 World blitz champion GM Le Quang Liem at the head, took the bronze with 14 points, leaving the nearest contender Kazakhstan 2 points behind.

The Asian Nations Cup for women was played in 5 rounds. The teams consisted of the same number of players (4+1), as the Men’s Section. The last round of the event was crucial. The top seeded team of China crushed Kazakhstan 4:0 to claim the gold with total 15 points. Meanwhile, India couldn’t overplay the local team of Iran and finished equal 2:2 after the more experienced IM Eesha Karavade lost against the young talented Iranian WIM Mitra Hejazipour. Thus India remained second with 13 points, while the team of Iran deservedly grabbed the bronze with 10.5 points.

As blitz championship was introduced back in 2012, this time six sets of medals were prepare: 2 for standard time control, 2 for rapid (new!) and two for blitz. In open section Kazakshtan beat China in the final (!) while China grabbed blitz honours ahead of India. Mighty Chinese female squad easily took gold medals in rapid competition, yet were eliminated in the semifinal of the blitz. India then beat Vietnam in the final.

See tournament website: http://an2014.ircf.ir

Detailed results of 2014 Asian Team Championship: open and women
Asian Team Chess Championship all-time summary: open and women
Asian Team Chess Championship all-time statistics: open and women

Details from rapid and blitz competition taken from chess-results.com
Open - rapid: preliminaries and play-offs
Open - blitz: preliminaries and play-offs
Women - rapid: preliminaries and play-offs
Women - blitz: preliminaries and play-offs

Asian Team Championship 2014 medal table:

1. China        4 gold - 1 silver - 1 bronze
2. India        1 gold - 4 silver - 0 bronze
3. Kazakhstan   1 gold - 0 silver - 1 bronze
4. Vietnam      0 gold - 1 silver - 4 bronze
5. Iran A       0 gold - 0 silver - 3 bronze
6. Iran B       0 gold - 0 silver - 1 bronze

/ based on news from chessdom.com /

European variant of chess (国际象棋 in Chinese) has never been as popular in China as xiangqi, the chess-related game derived from ancient chaturanga. Even though Chinese players had international contacts as early as in 1950s (see "Four unknown international matches China-USSR" for details), the game was banned during the first eight years of the Cultural Revolution. The political thaw allowed chess be played freely in late 1970s. China participated in the 1978 Olympiad and finished in impressive 20th. A memorable Chinese immortal was played then, when obscure Chinese player Liu Wenzhe steamrolled over GM Donner in 20 moves. Chess in China became more and more popular since then, a lot of extremely players appeared, and China women's team won gold Olympic medal as much as four times, while men's selection took silver in 2006. Four Chinese became women's World Champions: Xie Jun, Zhu Chen, Xu Yuhua and Hou Yifan. Ye Rongguang became China's first grandmaster in 1990, and Bu Xiangzhi became World's youngest GM at 13 years back in 1999.

The all-China team competition was established in 2005 and is played on yearly basis. It is called the National Chess League (中国国际象棋联赛) administered by Chinese Chess Association. The format is simple yet powerful: 12 (formerly 10) city/province teams compete in the double round robin tournament. Each match is played on five boards, of which two are women's duels. One selected game per match is rapid. The league usually takes off in late March and lasts until December. Teams are usually named after their primary commercial sponsors.

Though little attention is paid to the ChCL in Europe, it is actually extremely strong and fascinating event. It features many 2700+ grandmasters on regular basis including domestic stars Wang Hao, Wang Yue, Ding Liren, Bu Xiangzhi as well as a bunch of foreign players: Ivanchuk, Ponomariov, Malakhov, Short, Jobava, Motylev, Humpy, Yakovenko, Bologan and many, many more. Strongest teams come from Beijing, Shanghai and Shandong. ChCL is broadly covered live by its governing body, unfortunately only in Chinese: http://www.qipai.org.cn. Badly enough, ChCL managers have not yet discovered that putting together PGN files helps the games be saved for future generations, so ca. 45% games are missing, even from recent years.

Please note: We did our best to provide best quality data and struggled to finally recover every game, every match from the very beginning. However, since there are virtually no credible non-Chinese sources, there may be minor discrepancies; some translations may be awkward or even nonsence. If you are familiar with Chinese chess or you are native Chinese speaker please consider supporting our project. Thank you.

Chinese Chess League 2013 results

Chinese Chess League 2005-2013 summary

Chinese Chess League all-time statistics

The Four Nations Chess League is the three-level event and the only all-national chess team championship held in United Kingdom. Established in 1993, it soon became major event in the UK, attracting top British players as well as dozens of European leading grandmasters. Although nominally all-British, the 4NCL is predominantly English, with participation of few Welsh teams. Scotland and N.Ireland have their own (relatively weak) championships.

The 4NCL gained huge popularity in early 2000s and quickly became one of major chess leagues in Europe. Sadly, due to unstable financial conditions and inadequate funding, the league is not as strong as it could be. 4NCL Champions had problems reaching top positions in the European Club Cup, peaking at 20th in 2003 and 2012.

4NCL featured many top players, including Korchnoi, Shirov, Morozevich, Wojtaszek, Gurevich, Tiviakov, Cramling, Lautier (frankly some of these played very few games) and a bunch of domestic stars: Adams, Nunn, Short, Miles and the likes.

Matches in Division 1 are played on 8 boards and there has to be a woman in the line-up. 16 teams are divided onto two groups of 8, with top 4 from each group forming the Championship Pool. Bottom four from the Relegation Poll are relegated to Division 2. The league is usually played over five weekends, from October until May.

It took a lot of time and cost a lot of effort, but we made it possible to recover every detail from all 20 editions and the full history is now available at one mouse click. Please note that most games from seasons 1994-95 and 1995-96 are not available.

Some 4NCL Division 1 trivia:
All 20 seasons in 4NCL Div/1 - IM Andy Ledger
Most points scored - GM Johny Emms (118)
Most games played - IM Simon Ansell (194)
Most game wins - GM Mark Hebden (87)
Most games drawn - GM John Parker (85)
Least games lost - GM Michael Adams (2/59)
Best percentage (min.30 games) - GM Adams (85.6)
Most 4NCL titles - GM Mark Hebden (11)
Every time on 4NCL podium - GM Glenn Flear (16 times)

4NCL Website - http://www.4ncl.co.uk

4NCL summary 1993-2013 (link: http://www.olimpbase.org/leagueUK/4ncl.html)

4NCL all-time statistics

Weeks after conclusion of European Team Championship World's ten leading chess nations met in Antalya, Turkey in the run for World's most prestiguous trophy - The World Team Chess Championship. Eligible to participate were a.o. continental champions and top teams from Istanbul Olympiad. Sadly, Norway, India, Israel and the likes did not qualify so we could not see the magic of Carlsen, Anand, Gelfand, Caruana and others. There were still 18 players rated 2700+.

As Ukraine had a perfect take-off of 5/5, beating USA, China, Azerbaijan on their way, Russia - top seeds - struggled from the very beginning scoring 0.5/2 (Nakamura beat Kramnik and so US beat Russia 3-1). China were no better - 1/3. Newly crowned European Champions Azerbaijan were missing top two boards Radjabov and Mamedyarov, literally reducing their chances to the minimum.

Ukraine's chances broke on day 6 when they unexpectedly lost to the Netherlands. Meanwhile third seeds Armenia lost to Germany to the surprise of many 3-1 and were out of the game. The hit clash occured on penultimate day: Ukraine were in one point lead yet were defeated by the Russians 2.5-1.5 and so the title went to Russia - at last (no gold in Warsaw, no gold at Istanbul Olympiad in 2012, no gold in WTCh in 2011), China spurted to silver reaching sixth consecutive win, while Ukraine won bronze.

Best individual results were achieved by Armenia's top board GM Aronian: 6/8 and the Russian reserve Nepomnyaschy (or Nepomnatchtchi as he is commonly known) 5.5/7.

For more information you can visit the official website of the Championship http://wctc2013.tsf.org.tr/

See results of 2013 World Team Championship

See all-time summary

The Poland-hosted European Team Championship is over, and it is good time for a short statistical review. When it comes to the open section there were 38 teams present out of 56 E.C.U. members, on par with 2009 and 2011 editions, and three under record of 41 from Debrecen, Hungary in 1992. None of 10 European micro-nations arrived (Luxembourg, Faroe Islands, Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino, Malta, Cyprus, Monaco, Guernsey and Jersey) as they were set for 4th Small Nations tournament in Monte Carlo. Yet there were some prominent chess nations missing too: Bosnia and Herzegovina (Nikolic, Predojevic), Latvia (Shirov!), Moldova (Bologan), Slovakia who suffer deep structural crisis (Ftacnik, Stohl), Portugal, Estonia, Albania, Ireland. Most of the absentees suffered serious financial constraints and were unable to get enough funds for completing the team.

There were even less teams in the women's section. With 32 teams in the pool the counter may reach its 21st century peak, but it is still far from Debrecen 1992 record of thirty-eight. The following six federations did not send women's team: Sweden (!!), Denmark (!), Scotland, Wales, Montenegro, FYROM. No nation was represented solely by women's selection.



Teams in orange participated in both open and women's competition,
teams in yellow took part only in open event, teams in white were absent in Warsaw.
Note! Northern Ireland (in grey) are not member of E.C.U.

The teams of Azerbaijan in the Open section and Ukraine in Women's section are the new winners of the European Team Chess Championship, which was held in Warsaw/Poland 7-18 November, 2013.
Azerbaijan tied with Armenia in the last round, but Russia defeated the leader France in the last round, thanks to the victory of Andreikin, which helped Azerbaijan to win the gold. Silver went to France, and bronze went to Russia.

In the Women's section the leading Ukraine lost to Russia in the last 9th round, but since they were leading by 3 points, they became the winners afterall. Silver medal went to Russia, and bronze to Poland.

The Championship was held under the under the auspices of Bronisaw Komorowski, the President of the Republic of Poland. The organizer was The Polish Chess Federation under the auspices of the European Chess Union. The tournament was played according to the Swiss system in 9 rounds, with the time control 90 minutes for 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game + 30 seconds increment per move starting from move one.

For more information you can visit the official website of the Championship http://etcc2013.com


/ taken from www.europechess.net /

See results of 2013 European Team Championship: men and women

See all-time summary: men and women



Azerbaijan - the winners of open championship

Shadowed by the World Championship match, yet still important, the 19th European Team Championship commenced on Friday, November 8th in Warsaw, Poland in Novotel Hotel. The biennial event is held under patronage of Polish President Bronisław Komorowski and attracted 38 men's (no Latvia and no Slovakia) and 32 women's teams. As in previous years, the event is nine round Swiss, and the final order is decided by match points.

There is no Carlsen, of course, and Poland, the home side are missing their top board Wojtaszek, Anand's second. Russia have no Kramnik nor Karjakin, but Grischuk and Svidler are there. Ponomariov and Ivanchuk are missing for Ukraine, while Aronian (2801) leads extremely strong Armenian team. Other top rated players to arrive to Warsaw are Caruana (2782), Topalov (2774 - played Aronian in round 1 - these two are the strongest players ever to play a game of chess on Polish soil), Mamedyarov (2757), Adams (2752).

As the games took off, Russia sensationally lost to Turkey by 2.5-1.5 while second seeds Armenia went to a disappointing draw vs Bulgaria. Mighty France seem to be the strongest in the pool. In round 3 they scored thumping 3-1 win over Ukraine. England lost badly to Greece 3-1 on day two, but held Russia on the consecutive day. Czech Republic are in the lead, but this seems rather be lucky pairing so far, and challenges are yet to come.

In the women's section Armenia and Poland are in joint lead at 6 points, both to play each other on Monday. 15th seeds Israel step from one surprise to another: on day two the beat 2nd seeds Russia and then held 3rd seeds Georgia to a draw. Today they must face top seeded Ukraine - what a demanding roll!

Tournament website :: http://etcc2013.com
European Team Championship 1957-2011 summary :: men and women




Wojciech Bartelski, Mayor of Warszawa-Śródmieście district, member of honorary committee,
(and yes! - owner of olimpbase.org) starts game GM Svidler-GM Ivanisević,
Russia-Serbia, round 1, board 1.