Tomsk retain dominance; Armenia cruise to another gold
Posted by Webmaster on 16 Oct 2006
The 22nd men's European Club Cup was staged in Fuegen, Austra from 8th until 14th October drawing 56 teams. The event was dominated by Russian teams which took all three podium positions. Tomsk-400, the defending champions, grabbed another gold edging Ladya Kazan and Ural Sverdlovsk region by game point count. The winners were led by Alexander Morozevich and rising star Dmitry Yakovenko. Best individual results were achieved by Nybäck (Werder Bremen) - 6.5/7 and Morozevich - 5/6 (Elo performed 2916). Mika Yerevan of Armenia, with two Georgian and two Armenian players, took stylish win in a 11th women's Cup with 5 wins and 2 draws. Silver went to Energy-Investi of Georgia and bronze went to AVS Krasnoturinsk of Russia. As usual there were just a little over ten teams participating.
See OlimpBase coverage: men, women
Event home page
ChessBase report
European Club Cup starts in Fügen, Austria
Posted by Webmaster on 09 Oct 2006
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
The 2006 Mitropacup in Brno
Posted by Webmaster on 03 Oct 2006
The 25th men's and 3rd women's Mitropacup took place in Brno, Czech Republic from 7th to 15th September, 2006. There were 10 teams and 74 players (including 8 GMs) in both tournaments competing in a four (men) and two (women) round robin. Hungary won an extremely tight men's competition half of a point ahead of the Czechs and Croatia. In the women's section, Slovenia took their third consecutive trophy edging Germany and Croatia. The line-ups of men's event were decent with a lot of good chess played at top boards while women's tournament was somehow weaker than previous years.The Mitropa Cup (often spelled as Mitropacup or Mitropa-Cup) is the annual team chess tournament for national teams from Central Europe. The word Mitropa is a derivative of German Mittel Europa (Central Europe). The idea of the Mitropa Cup came from Gertrude Wagner, who wanted to create a chess team tournament after the example of respective football competition. She, together with her husband Karl and the president of the Austrian Chess Federation Kurt Jungwirth were the founders and organizers of the tournament. The series commenced in 1976 in Innsbruck. Read here the complete history of the Mitropa Cup.
The home page of the 2006 cup: http://www.chess.cz/web/mitropacup2006/eng.html
OlimpBase coverage of 2006 Mitropacup: men, women
See results of past Mitropa Cups: men, women
World Youth U16 Olympiad: Ukraine take top honours
Posted by Webmaster on 20 Aug 2006
The eleventh World Youth (Children's) Olympiad took place in a small city of Doğubeyazıt, located in Ağrı province, a cosy corner lying in Eastern Turkey next to Iranian border. The region is famous from vicinity of the legendary mountain Ararat, which is recorded in the Old Testament to be the place where the Noah's Ark came to rest after the great flood. The games commenced on August 6th, and concluded one week later.China took early lead but lost 3.5-0.5 to Ukraine on day five and the Ukrainian team took over the lead. On the next day they scored a decisive (as future revealed) win vs Hungary, and saw Georgia, another possible contenders losing sensationally to Uzbekistan.
The penultimate round saw a true bombshell: Hungary conceded 3-1 the match vs Azerbaijan, a team rated lower by 230 Elo points! Georgia wiped out Sweden 4-0 to creep into second. The Georgians didn't release the reins on the last day steamrolling poor Turkmenistani team with yet another 4-0. Hungary were held by China "B" (another huge disappointment for the top seeds) to stay in shared fourth. China took bronze.
Best individual result was achieved by Ukraine's board #3 Yaremko (8½/10). Best Elo performance (2509) was obtained by China's top board Wan Yunguo.
Final results:
GOLD: Ukraine (Kravtsiv, IM Onischuk, Yaremko, Zherebukh) 31
SILVER: Georgia (IM Margvelashvili, Paichadze, FM Benidze, Bregadze, Lomsadze) 29
BRONZE: China (Wan, Yu, Zeng, Li, Du) 26
4. Hungary, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan - 25
See full details and watch all the games from the 2006 Olympiad
(note! Games from rounds 2 and 7 are missing)
Also, we have updated our database with Children's Olympiads' statistics and records from years 1999-2006.
Note! Data and results from years 1996-1998 are not available. We are looking for all kind of information on the topic.
http://www.olimpbase.org/youth/children.html
The above link is a reference for all Children's Olympiad-related materials available in our archive. It is recommended to be used by those who would like to link to OlimpBase in respect of the event.
Russia and Hungary win European U18 Team Championship
Posted by Webmaster on 25 Jul 2006
Balatonlelle, the well-known holiday resort in Hungary hosted the 6th European Youth Team Chess Championship in mid July. The competition is held annually since 2000, with the exception of 2005 when the event scheduled in Turkey was cancelled due to lack of interest. There were 13 teams in boys' event and 12 teams in girls' event participating. The format was seven round Swiss at four and two board for boys and girls respectively.A lot of extremely strong chess nations did not arrive, including former European Champions Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, France, Poland, Czech Republic, England, Netherlands, France and more. Still a bunch of decent (+2400) IMs came to Balatonlelle. Russia came for the second time. The world saw independent Serbia giving their opening performance in the world of chess.
Russia won competetive boys' event ahead of Hungary and Germany while Hungary won their premier top honour in girls' competition ahead of Romania and Slovakia.
See information, results and statistics of boys' event
See information, results and statistics of girls' event
See overall info on Euro U18 Championship
USA wins Women's World Chess Cup
Posted by Webmaster on 13 Jul 2006
The Women's Chess Cup took place in Dresden, Germany, on July 7th and 8th. It was the final weekend of the Football World Cup. The idea behind the event was to dupe the rules of the football tournament. One female chess player from each of 32 participating nations was invited. Some powerful chess nations like China, Russia or Georgia did not qualify to the World Cup so they had no chance to take part in the chess cup either; while others, mainly African nations, do have decent football teams but are not capable of compose girl's chess team, so they did not send players to Dresden and were represented by reserve home players.There were eight groups, A to H, with four players from four different countries each. Top two of each group qualified for the play-offs, with two games and a tiebreak deciding who proceeded. In the World Soccer Championship the USA went out in the preliminaries, and Germany made it to the semi-finals to take third. In the Women's World Cup the picture was different: Susan Polgar triumphed for the USA defeating Eli Paehtz of Germany in the final.
Speaking in football terms, the results of the World Championship final might be traveresed (exclusively for purposes our chess enjoyment) in the following way:
Germany - USA 2-2 (1-2) --> Read match report
USA - Germany 2-0 (1-0) --> Read match report
Links:
ChessBase report (in English)
ChessBase report (in German)
Deutsche Schachbund report (in German)
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| PLAY-OFF STAGE | |||||||
| Achtelfinals | Quaterfinals | Semifinals | Final | ||||
Paehtz  | 1½ | Paehtz | 2 | Paehtz | 1½ | Paehtz | ½ |
Cramling  | ½ | ||||||
Kachiani-G.  | 1½ | Kachiani-G. | 0 | ||||
Leite  | ½ | ||||||
Sedina  | 1 | Chang  | 0 | Sebag  | ½ | ||
| Chang | 1 | ||||||
| Sebag | 1 | Sebag | 2 | ||||
Fuchs  | 1 | ||||||
Lujan  | 2 | Lujan | 2 | Lujan | ½ | Polgar  | 1½ |
Juergens  | 0 | ||||||
Hunt  | 0 | Socko  | 0 | ||||
| Socko | 2 | ||||||
Heinatz  | 0 | Ushenina  | 0 | Polgar | 1½ | ||
| Ushenina | 2 | ||||||
| Polgar | 2 | Polgar | 2 | ||||
Macek  | 0 | ||||||
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GOLD: GM Susan Polgar
SILVER: IM Elisabeth Paehtz
BRONZE: IM Marie Sebag
4TH PLACE: WGM Carolina Lujan
The 37th Chess Olympiad is over. Armenia and Ukraine were to celebrate their first wins in men's and women's events. It was by far the biggest Olympiad ever seen: over 100 women's and almost 150 men's teams arrived which is more than 10% more than in Bled, 2002, the largest Olympiad held so far. Also, the Turin tournament was the strongest of all Olympiads. The only World's top players missing in Turin were Topalov, Leko and Polgar. Also, rejuvenated Chinese women's squad was fairly weaker and China failed to wintheir fifth consecutive title.
Armenia took a quick draw vs Hungary on the last day of the 37th Chess Olympiad to finish at 36 points and win the Hamilton-Russel Cup for the first time. Silver went to the Chinese who beat Netherlands while Israel sensationally defeated Russia 3-1 only to see USA pass them just at the line as the Americans wiped out Norway 3.5-0.5 on the last day to take bronze medals.
6. Tiviakov (NED, 2669) - Zhang (CHN, 2623)
11. Morozevich (RUS, 2730) - Avrukh (ISR, 2633)
24. Czarnota (POL, 2529) - Moiseenko (UKR, 2662)
33. Bruzon Batista (CUB, 2652) - Jobava (GEO, 2646)
65. Agrest (SWE, 2570) - Kulaots (EST, 2557)
71. Brunello (ITA, 2339) - Ganguly Surya (IND, 2578)
80. Jenni (SUI, 2510) - Darbanvaighani (IRI, 2396)
163. Cawdery (RSA, 2235) - Grigoryan (TKM, 2411)
309. Radziewicz (POL, 2439) - Dzagnidze (GEO, 2454)