ETC: Czech Republic & France Lead, Live Games Controversy

While the Anand-Carlsen match hasn't been all too exciting so far, the European Team Championship in Warsaw, Poland is providing many great games which you can play through on this first rest day in Chennai. Czech Republic and France are tied for first place after three rounds; both teams won their first three matches. France beat Ukraine on Sunday and the Czechs were too strong for Turkey, who defeated top seed Russia the round before. In the women's section Armenia, Poland and Ukraine still have a with a perfect score. Meanwhile, there is a controversy about the transmission of the games.

Photos © Marek Skrzypczak courtesy of the ETC

Whereas the mighty SOCAR team lost in the penultimate round of the European Club Cup, when there was no time to recover, the top seeds in the European Team Championship stumbled as early as the second round. The match on the top boards was a wonderful team effort from the Turks, who drew on three boards.

Former World Junior Champion Alexander Ipatov held a draw against Peter Svidler rather comfortably in a Philidor, Baris Esen and Dmitry Andreikin repeated moves even quicker. Turkey opened the score with a spectacular win on board 1:

Mustafa Yilmaz then held World Cup star Evgeny Tomashevsky to a draw after 86 moves, sealing Russia's fate.

The French team also won with the smallest possible margin. Romain Edouard was responsible for the only win:

Alexander Areshchenko scored a nice win in the match Ukraine-Croatia, which was another 2.5-1.5:

England suffered a painful 3-1 defeat against Greece (and as a reward they play Russia on Sunday!). Luke McShane was checkmated:

Judit Polgar won her second game in a row, in the match Hungary-Georgia. An amazing ending!

Another game that shouldn't be missed is the following. Speaking of domination, look at Black's poor queenside.

A high-level clash was the following, between the two players who qualified for the 2014 Candidates tournament from the Grand Prix. It was the top board in the match Azerbaijan-Bulgaria and an impressive win for Topalov.

Levon Aronian won a good game as well. Surprisingly, the other three Armenians could only draw with their opponents from Montenegro.

On Sunday France defeated Ukraine, who are playing without e.g. Ivanchuk, Ponomariov and Eljanov. The score was 3-1 and Romain Edouard won again, with the following combination:

After their big success the other day, Turkey went down 3.5-0.5 against the Czech Republic, who also delivered many of the players for the Novy Bor team, the reigning European Club Champion, last month. David Navara won a superb strategical game, where the themes "open file", "pawn break" and "Réti's Rifle" (queen behind bishop) and "rook on the 7th" could all be seen:

The local heros from Poland lost 2.5-1.5 to Azerbaijan where Teimour Radjabov managed to beat Dariusz Swiercz in a 4 vs. 3 rook ending:

Russia vs. England ended in 2-2. Peter Svidler beat Luke McShane, but Gawain Jones managed to win against Alexander Morozevich:

The Dutch men lost the first round and then beat Wales 4-0, but in the third round it was again Jan Smeets who lost to an IM and the game decided the match:

In the Slovenia-Italy match, Fabiano Caruana suffered a rare defeat against a lower rated player:

European Team Championship 2013 | Round 3 Standings

In the women's section Armenia, Poland and Ukraine started with three victories. The tournament has seen quite a few upsets on individual boards:

European Team Championship 2013 | Women | Round 3 Standings

The European Team Championship takes place Novewmber 7-18, 2013 in Warsaw, Poland. Teams consist of four players and one reserve. The tournament is a 9-round Swiss. Players may only agree to a draw after the 40th move has been made by black.

Live games controversy

Before finishing this report, it cannot remain unmentioned that the organizers of the European Team Championship have taken the controversial decision not to allow online chess platforms to transmit the games live. The are only allowing Chessbase to transmit the games, but not others such as ICC or Chessbomb or Chess.com, who have recently started bringing live games as well. The reasoning behind this policy includes the following:

It is widely recognized that chess games cannot be copyrighted, but the live transmission of games is under the copyright.

However, this sentence is logically inconsistent. If chess games cannot be copyrighted (which is true), you cannot stop someone from showing them online "live". (And what is "live" in the first place? No delay? A one-second delay? Is a 30-second delay still live? Where to draw the line?)

Besides, it is certainly not "widely recognized" that "the live transmission of games is under the copyright". Chessbase won the court case against the Bulgarian Chess Federation, who tried to prevent the Hamburg company from transmitting the Anand-Topalov World Championship match.

Apparently there were some technical problems during the third round. This prompted Ilya Levitov, FIDE Vice President and Head of the Management Board of the Russian Chess Federation, to post the following on Facebook:

Dear Polish chess federation! If you want to sell smth. try to make your product work. You are the first federation that suddenly blackmails other federations who want to do the usual broadcast from the tournaments, but your online doesn't even work! What does the "best chess manager" and ECU President think about that?