The history of Chess Olympiads spans back to 1927, yet women's tournament was introduced only in 1957. While traditional division between men's and women's events was, and still it, predominant, technically speaking there are no "men's" Olympiad in chess, since they have always been open for every player, regardless of his or hers sex. This article thoroughly guides through the history of women's participation in the "men's olympiads". And it has never been easy for women to be successful, given there are no gender parities prescribed in chess, and all of them qualified for the national teams only because there were no stronger male players in sight.

Definitely the first woman who threw down the gauntlet to the men's world was Vera Menchik. Born from Czech father and British mother she was raised in the Soviet Union, from where she left for Great Britain. She took her first World Championship title in 1927 with 100% performance and had since outclassed her female opposition in consecutive championship tournaments. (....)

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Following the installation of the pgn4web game viewer there is now a unique opportunity for every player to follow the handwritten analyses of the fourth World Chess Champion, the legendary Alexander Alekhine.

There is excellent Alekhine's chess notebooks blog by Denis Teyssou, who deciphered and digitized Alekhine's handwritten notes, so there comes a bunch of five brilliantly annotated games from Buenos Aires 1939 Olympiad, four played by Alekhine himself and the fifth by Canadian then prodigy David Yanofsky.

Alekhine's instructive remarks reflect his way of thinking, in-depth strategic views as well as brief tactical comments provide with fascinating and highest quality chess lecture that will help you improve your chess skills and obtain more profound understanding of the game, no matter if you are rated 1000 or 2600. These PGN's are not available anywhere else! Enjoy, and if you find them useful, please drop us a note.

Vladas Mikenas-Alexander Alekhine ½-½
Fricis Apsenieks-Alexander Alekhine 0-1
Jens Enevoldsen-Alexander Alekhine 0-1
Moshe Czerniak-Alexander Alekhine 0-1

Daniel Yanofsky-Alberto Dulanto 1-0

Remember! While browsing the game C8 - view PGN; E8 - analysis board with engine; H8 - help

Recent months our readers filed numerous complains about the way the game viewer works. Since it used Java it was heavily platform-dependent, causing numerous software conflicts and many people found it impossible to view games due to internal errors. Moreover, games could not be accessed from any of mobile devices.

This is why we have decided to switch to one of best chess browsers online, the pgn4web. It was created by Italian programmer Paolo Casaschi in 2009, and has since gained reasonable reputation among leading chess webmasters. Compared to the old viewer it has many extra features and offers wide range of opportunities:

- no more internal errors
- loads faster, does not need Java, platform independent
- available on mobile devices (iPad, iPhone), many games can be analyzed at the same time
- much more flexible, under constant development
- wide choice of first class graphics
- and more

One of its more intriguing and innovative features is, that clicking on every field makes an effect, e.g. "a1" - go to the start of the game, "h8" - help, "e7" - flip board, "d8" - view PGN, and many more.

Please visit the pgn4web home page
Test how it works: Armenia takes gold in Istanbul 2012

Bosnia and Herzegovina may not be most recognized or richest European nation, yet it has long and fruitful chess tradition (including silver medals in Moscow Olympiad in 1994). Moreover, the federal Union established the all-national league (Premijer Liga) in 2002 when three ethnical chess sub-federations: Federation Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosniaks), Federation of Republika Srpska (Serbs) and Federation of Herceg-Bosna (Croats) agreed to create cross-national platform. Each sub-federations runs its own team championship too, effectively making it all-national second level.

The Premijer Liga became one of strongest chess leagues in Europe. With legendary Bosna Sarajevo, four time European Club Cup winners, the event featured a.o. Nigel Short, Teimour Radjabov, Michael Adams, Evgeny Bareev, Suat Atalik, Pavel Eljanov, Alexander Morozevich, Alexei Shirov and the likes. The format has been ten team round robin.

Out of 11 editions, Bosna won on 8 occasions, and Željezničar, Bihać and Široki Brijeg took one single trophy each. The 12th championship is being played right now in Sarajevo.


Summary of Bosnia and Herzegovina Premijer Liga 2002-2012

The Mitropa Cup, an annual chess competition for Central European nations, saw its 32nd edition in its 37 year-old history, as created in 1976 by late Gertrude Wagner. Women participated for the 10th time only, as women's series commenced only in 2002. The tournament became an important benchmark for promising youngsters and future anchors for senior sides. The line-up has been very stable for almost 20 years: Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary and Italy.

In the men's tournament Croatia were top seeds and indeed won easily, scoring 22/36. With three rounds to go they had clear 4 MP advantage over the chasing pack. GM Saric showed particularly good form. Germany, the only team to avoid match loss, led by Latvian-born GM Fridman took second, while Czech Republic edged out neighbourghs Slovakia on tie-break.

In the women's competition, where newcomers Poland, having replaced France, gave impressive display, Slovakia and Italy were two strongest teams. The latter lost badly to the home side Germany 2-0 and so Slovakia took their first ever Mitropa Cup, with experienced IM Eva Repkova scoring 7.5/9 and Germany, with Filiz Osmandoja giving briliant performance at 8/9, came in second.

See complete results of 2013 Mitropa Cup :: men :: women

Summary of Mitropa Cup 1976-2013 :: men :: women

This herculean task took a lot of arduous work to be completed and hundreds of hours of dilligent seach in the local newspapers. And here it comes - the history of Polish Team Championship spanned close to 90 years. 68 editions, 130+ teams, 1300+ players. And still much more is yet to be found: detailed results are unavailable for almost half of the championships and there is even no crosstable for 1992. Please enjoy and track throughout the history of Polish chess: the golden times of the interwar period, gloomy era of Stalinism, coarse decade of 1960s, then the 1970s boom and more. Don't forget to search for achievements of Polonia Warsaw dream team from the end of 20th century. Enjoy!

What we have done would never be possible without support of many chess enthusiasts from author's homeland, of which we want to mention Tomasz Delega and Michał Bartel from Polish Chess Federation and Przemysław Jahr who provided with complete medal winners list.

WAŻNE! Historyków, działaczy, zawodników oraz miłośników szachów bardzo prosimy o nadsyłanie uwag, uzupełnień, a przede wszystkim biuletynów z brakujących mistrzostw. Skompletujmy razem historię drużynowych mistrzostw Polski, tak jak udało się to z indywidualnymi mistrzostwami.

See complete results of Polish Team Championship 2012

Summary of Polish Team Championship 1929-2012

The Sankt Petersburg Chess Federation team took first place on tiebreaks in a dramatic last round. Despite losing their first match of the event, they were lucky that Malakhit could not beat the SHSM ”Our Hopes”.

Peter Svidler, the first board of the champions, obtained a winning position against Baadur Jobava, but was not able to convert it effectively and ended up drawing in 48 moves. The match was decided on the last board, where Ivan Popov beat Maxim Matlakov with white in a sharp struggle.

This result gave Malakhit the chance to take clear first place with a win over SHSM ”Nashe Nasledie”. The young promise Daniil Dubov from the SHSM got a win against Viktor Bologan in 32 moves to put pressure on the favorites. Only Alexander Grischuk - who had a great tournament achieving a 2980 rating performance – did his job and defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi, but this was only enough to tie the match.

SPb Chess Fed and Malakhit finished with the same amount of match points, but the individual results decided who would take the first prize.

/ taken from chessdom.com /

See complete results of Russian Team Championship 2013

Summary of Russian Team Championship 1992-2013

Breaking news, Athens, April 1st, 2013 Shocking news come from FIDE secretariat in Athens. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, FIDE president, revealed FIDE Board most surprising decision on Monday. The press conference was held, where Mr. Ilyumzhinov relucantly admitted that the Chess Olympiads, the oldest, biggest and most prestiguous event in the chess world cease to exist.

- That was nothing like an easy challenge, be we were left no choice - explained Ilyumzhinov with a sad voice. - Chess Olympiads means almost 100 years of tradition, but they are simply too big and too expensive to match contemporary expectations. We just cannot afford it. Maybe 20 or 30 teams send professionals to the Olympiads. But how about the rest? They are just too weak to take care.

- But that's not all - Ilyumzhinov statement becomes more offensive - to me it no more makes any sense to organize "top-level" worldwide events. Look what these guys are doing?! Carlsen and Kramnik claim to be WCh contenders and they lose badly game by game. They were both overpowered in the last round of the Candidates. This could never happen in the era of the Soviet Union. I'm quite disguised with the level of play. Computers make humans think less and play more automatically. We have to consider longer time controls. -

The decision on wiping out the Olympiads from the chess calendar is effective at once. That means there will be no Olympiad in Tromsoe in 2014 nor in Azerbaijan in 2016. The organizers have not yet expressed their position on the issue.

So it seems that the series lasted for 85 years (1927-2012). It has not been yet decided whether the Hamilton-Russel cup would stay in Armenia, the recent champions, forever.

See the all-time summary of R.I.P. FIDE Chess Olympiads



Update April 2nd - April Fools' Day! The Olympiads are and will be continued hopefully forever. Stay calm and smile :):)