French Team Championship: three teams in the lead

The teams of Clichy, Mulhouse Philidor and Marseille Echecs have won all of their first seven matches at the French Team Championship. More big names are now playing in Mulhouse, like Michael Adams, Dmitry Jakovenko and Fabiano Caruana. Going through the games, we noticed that the Queen's Gambit Declined seems to be more drawish than the Petroff these days.

Fressinet (Clichy) vs Dorfman (Evry Grand Roque) at the Top 12 in Mulhouse | Photo Chess Club Philidor Mulhouse

General info

The Top 12 of the French Team Championship takes place May 26th - June 5th, 2011 in Mulhouse, a city and commune in eastern France, close to the Swiss and German borders. In a round-robin, the strongest 12 teams fight for the French club title, with Chalons en Champagne defending their title. GMs Laurent Fressinet, Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, Alexei Dreev, David Navara, Pavel Eljanov, Le Quang Liem, Michael Adams, Dmitry Jakovenko, Fabiano Caruana. Arkadij Naiditsch, Etienne Bacrot, Anish Giri, Loek van Wely and Mikhail Krasenkow are the strongest players.

Rounds 5-7

As Thomas pointed out in a comment below our first report, the French Chess Federation is using an interesting system to determine the standings. A won match results in 3 points, a drawn match in 2 points and a lost match at the board 1 point. A match lost by forfeit results in 0 points. Besides, only decisive games count, hence a given result can be 3-0 (with five draws). "There is some sort of “Bilbao bonus” because 6-2 or 5-1 is worth more than 4-0, representing a tie-break criterion at the end of the competition." (Thomas).

One thing is clear about the current standings: the teams of Clichy, Mulhouse Philidor and Marseille Echecs have still won all of their matches. Three players are on a superb 6.5/7 score: Almira Skripchenko, Kamil Miton and Emmanuel Bricard. Vladislav Tkachiev, Andrey Sokolov, David Navara and Silvia Collas scored 6/7.

Today, in the 8th round, there's the clash between Mulhouse Philidor and Marseille Echecs, and also Clichy against reigning champs Chalons en Champagne. Tomorrow Marseille Echecs will face Evry Grand Roque and it's Clichy versus Mulhouse Philidor, followed by Evry Grand Roque vs Mulhouse Philidor and Marseille Echecs vs Chalons en Champagne in round 10 and a final round with Chalons en Champagne vs Evry Grand Roque and Clichy vs Marseille Echecs.

Below you'll find the current standings (click on the club to see the team of players) and a selection of games from rounds 5-7. We also included two quick draws in the game viewer this time: Riazantsev-Bacrot and Pelletier-Adams. Especially the first game is an interesting one, since both players were a second of Alexander Grischuk in Kazan in May! Their conclusion about the Queen's Gambit Declined apparently hasn't changed during the last week, and after 14 well known moves they called it a day. Pelletier and Adams needed even less moves to split the point. Can we have more Petroffs, please? ;-)

Place	Team	Points	Played	#	+	-
1	Clichy	21	7	25	28	3
2	Mulhouse Philidor	21	7	21	28	7
3	Marseille Echecs	21	7	20	27	7
4	Evry Grand Roque	19	7	20	27	7
5	Metz Fischer	17	7	16	24	8
6	Chalons en Champagne	15	7	13	23	10
7	Lutèce Echecs	11	7	-8	11	19
8	Vandoeuvre	11	7	-12	9	21
9	Noyon	9	7	-18	11	29
10	Strasbourg	9	7	-19	7	26
11	Rueil Malmaison	7	7	-28	8	36
12	Guingamp	7	7	-30	5	35

Selection of games rounds 5-7

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC