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 :):)

Ukraine became the independent nation only in 1993 but they had ever been strong in chess in the era of the Soviet Union (Boleslavsky, Geller, Alburt). The team championship is just about to celebrate its 20th anniversory. Even though the prestige of the annual team championship played in Alushta is nowhere close to the level manifested by the top Ukrainian players (Ivanchuk never participated, Karjakin, Efimenko, Ponomariov just a few times in the past) it is still interesting competition. Moreover, it has had little, if any, online coverage.

Today we fill the gap with the major support of GM Mikhail Golubev, who has been compiling broad results from early 2000s. You may want to study early editions with the two horse race between the teams from Donetsk and Kharkiv, followed by series of successes of Kyiv chess teams. An inspiring one might be the 2006 championship, the only one that brought Lviv to the glory. Or maybe the most fascinating one was in 2004, when top four teams tied on match points so the podium was to be determined on a basis of tie-breaking.

Please note - results from 1993-1998 are missing! HELP

>> The summary of Ukrainian Team Chess Championship <<

The city of Astana in Kazakhstan hosted the Women's World Chess Team Championship from March 2nd to 12 in the Duman Hotel in Astana. Ten best teams in the world participated: China, Russia, Ukraine, USA, India, France, Turkey, Georgia, Rumania and Kazakhstan. Each team consisted of five players, with four playing in each of the nine rounds of this round robin tournament. Time control was 90 minutes per 40 moves and thirty minutes until the end of the game plus 30 seconds increment per move.

In the ninth round of WWTC Ukraine drew all four games against Russia – all finished peacefully after 31 or 32 moves (above board one with IM Valentina Gunina, 2505, playing GM Kateryna Lahno, 2547). China outplayed India 2.5-1.5 score – Ju Wenjun defeated Eesha Karavade (picture above) while other games finished in a draw. The fight between France and Turkey finished in favor of France. Kubra Ozturk (picture above) made a draw against Nino Maisuradze, while Turkey lost the rest of the games. As a result, French team finished on the ninth place, Turkey in tenth. The match Romania versus the USA finished in a draw and both teams finished the tournament in the second half of the table. A tough match between Kazakhstan and Georgia finished in favor of the latter. Nana Dzagnidze outplayed Guliskhan Nakhbaeva but Abdumalik Zansaya (picture above) defeated Nino Khurtsidze and equalized the score. The youngest player in the tournament (Zansaya) sacrificed a rook at the right moment and didn’t let her opponent escape.

Ju Wenjun (7.0/9 with a 2651 performance, Irina Krush (7.0/9 = 2607), Tan Zhongyi (7.0/9 = 2570), Natalia Zhukova (6.0/8 = 2500) and Olga Girya (6.5/8 = 2522) showed the best results on boards 1–5.

/ taken from www.chessbase.com /

>> Complete results of Astana 2013 Women's World Team Championship <<

>> View the summary of Women's World Team Championship 2007-2013 <<

The Chess Olympiads photo album has been updated and 2012 Istanbul photos were added. Now photos of virtually all of participants of recent five Olympiads are there.

The unique collection was compiled by the Italian Giorgio Gozzi. Please find the link below and enjoy collection of ca. 5000 snapshots.

Chess Olympiads 2004-2012 Photo Album