Interesting team set-up Turkish League
Seeing the pack of grandmasters could be misleading because of this board system. A team with two super-strong grandmasters may prove useless if the opposing team has a stronger group of youth players. The winning team over 10 gains 2 match points while a tie means both sides get 1 point.The league has 72 titled players: 22 GMs, 18 IMs (five of them also have WGM titles), 15 FMs, 1 CM, 10 WGMs, 3 WIMs and 3 WFMs.Before the season, Adana Truva, ?Ѭ?sek Aquamatch, THY (Turkish Airlines) and Doruk Koleji were the major contenders for the title. Adana Truva is a very strong and balanced team with GMs Gashimov (though he has not showed up yet) , Guseinov, Safarli and the Turkish stars IM Haznedaro?Ñ??lu, Y?Ѭ±lmaz (16-year-old youngster who grounded down GM Gurevich in the first round), IM Dzagnidze, WIM Yildiz and a relatively strong group of youth boards. ?Ѭ?sek Aquamatch has the grandmaster trio Atalik, Papaiannou, Banikas and FM Demirel plus the strongest Turkish female player Ekaterina Atal?Ѭ±k. THY has Gagunashvili, the Muzychuk sisters, the strong Turkish IMs Can (who already has a GM-norm) and Erdo?Ñ??du, K?Ѭ±l?Ѭ±?ɬßaslan and the Georgian youngster Salome.
After five rounds, two teams have won all their matches so far: Doruk Koleji (with GM Mamedov, GMSavchenko, FM Erturan Secer and WGM Stepovaia) and Truva Satran?É¬ß Spor Kul?ɬºb?ɬº (with GM Huseynov, GM Safarli, IM Haznedaroglu, IM Esen and IM Dzagnidze). The ?Ѭ?stanbul team with GMs Atal?Ѭ±k, Papaiannou, Banikas and IM Atal?Ѭ±k lost three games but all of their opponents were major contenders for the league title. Be?Ö??ikta?Ö??, despite not having any foreign player, only lost one match thanks too the strongest pack of youth boards in the league.
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Thanks to ?É‚Äìzg?ɬºr Akman. Here's his big report on the first four rounds. A selection of games:
- Official website
- Games in PGN