IM Blažo Kalezić: Champion of Montenegro for 2020
Montenegro is a beautiful Mediterranean country with picturesque coastal regions and majestic mountains (hence its Italian name, for Black Mountain). Cruel and graceful, the fascinating nature of this small state across the Adriatic Sea from Italy has always stirred excitement and inspiration.
“The most beautiful meeting of land and sea at the time of the birth of our planet.” —Lord Byron
1) Perast is a tiny, idyllic village in the breathtaking Boka Bay, 2) Kotor
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A gorgeous coastline weds with dramatic landscapes of its mountains adorned by woods, spacious pastures, lakes, pristine rivers, deep and mysterious canyons. Like the Tara River Canyon, the second longest in the world after the Grand Canyon.
The Tara River Canyon
Mt Durmitor, 1) Zabljak, 2) Riding on top of clouds
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Montenegro, a proclaimed ecological state, has five National Parks. One of them, Biogradska Gora was declared as such in 1878, only six years after Yellowstone, the first National Park in the world.
Swimming and sunbathing in the Mediterranean and skiing in the mountains on the same day? Why not. During certain months of the year, typically April and May, you go to the beach in the morning, then you go skiing on the slopes of the mighty Mt Durmitor in the afternoon. Cool, eh?
Skiing was introduced in the Mediterranean country by the Norwegian officer Henrik Angel in 1892
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Chess is very popular in Montenegro. I run some stats in 2016 showing Montenegro having over 100 Masters per million population (ALL Masters over FIDE 2,200, that is NM/FM/IM/GM which is a more reliable indication of how chess is popular in a country), which made The Black Mountain ranked 2nd in the world after Iceland (for comparison, Russia 26, France 9, England 6, USA 3, India 0.3, China 0.2 — in other words, Montenegro has 500 times more chess Masters per capita than India).
The tournament hall of the 72th MNE-ch
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The 72th championship of the country took place in the capital Podgorica last month. IM Blažo Kalezić (b. 1978, FIDE 2466) triumphed with six wins and three draws, a full point ahead of GM Blagojević. It was his second title, the first one won back in 1999.
Blažo @BakaPG is an amateur player. He is a lawyer with Konsing, a telecommunications & IT company in Podgorica.
He is also a very dangerous and skillful blitz player with a rating of 2556 (with the 2664 peak in 2016). In 2018 he participated in the European Rapid & Blitz championship in Skopje, North Macedonia. In the field of 311 players (61 GMs, 49 IMs) he came in 12th. Kalezić was in the leading group throughout the event until the next-to-last round when he lost the 2-game mini-match to the tournament winner GM Vladislav Artemiev of Russia.
The following game was played in the 8th round of the 72th championship. At that point, Kalezić had 6/7 and Nikčević 5.5/7 points with five wins in a row. The game was complicated and stressful as it was practically to decide who would be the next champion. All annotations by Kalezić. I like his honest and impartial commentary on the events unfolding in the games.
GM Nikčević and IM Kalezić (background) during their tense game
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The next game is from the 1997 championship of Yugoslavia. Kalezic faced the young FM Miloš Perunović, today one of the strongest GMs in Serbia (the same opponents played their most important game at the 2004 Montenegro Open in Bar; they met each other in the last round to decide who was going to earn a GM ball; Kalezić chose the Scandinavian in place of his favorite and best weapon - the French; in the end, he lost and Perunović became a GM!).
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Here is a game played in the Montenegro Cup from a match between the local Podgorica rivals Buducnost and Elektroprivreda.
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And for the end, a game Kalezić played the Serbian legend Draško Velimirović.
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The St Stefan islet; the 1992 Fischer-Spassky match was played here
