Upsets in 1st round European Team Ch

In the first round of the European Team Championship Russia immediately dropped a match point, against Croatia. More upsets: Bulgaria lost to Italy and Switzerland beat Ukraine. Results, games and photos from Novi Sad.

The 17th European Team Championship is organized by the European Chess Union and Serbia Chess Federation. The Championship is held in Novi Sad, Serbia (80 km northwest of the capital Belgrade and 280 km south of Budapest).

The dates are October 21th (day of arrival) until October 31th 2009 (day of departure). It's a nine round Swiss played from October 22nd to 30th, without a rest day. The time control is 90 min. for 40 moves + 30 min. & 30 sec. increment.

Round 1

Many top players have joined, or will later join their teams for this year's European Team Championship. On the players list we see cracks like Topalov, Aronian, Radjabov, Morozevich, Jakovenko, Svidler, Gashimov, Shirov...

But some big names other missing as well. Magnus Carlsen cancelled his participation only a week ago; the Norwegian super-star preferred to take some rest before the Tal Memorial, following the advise of his trainer Garry Kasparov. Sport-Express has reported that Grischuk was excluded from the team from Russia because he refused to appear at the team's training session. Ivanchuk, who also plays the Tal Memorial, won't go to Novi Sad, and neither are e.g. Gelfand, Leko and Short.

Despite the standard Swiss first-round pairing, with the top half playing the bottom half, there were a few upsets already. Croatia held Russia to a 2-2 draw (Morozevich beat Kozul but Jakovenko lost to Saric) and Ukraine lost to Switzerland (Kortchnoi drew with Volokitin on board one; Gallagher's win over Kryvoruchko was decisive).

Bulgaria, that started without their star Topalov, lost to Italy. Caruana beat Cheparinov on board one, IM Rombaldoni lost to GM Iotov but IM Shytaj decided matters by beating GM Bojkov. It's clear that Norway will be missing Carlsen; they lost 0.5-3.5 against France. The young Dutch team, without e.g. Timman, Sokolov, Van Wely, Nijboer or Tiviakov but with Smeets, Stellwagen, l'Ami, Werle and Ernst instead, started with a 4-0 sweep against Wales.

In the women section favourites Russia, Georgia, Ukraine and Serbia all won convincingly, although Georgia's board one GM Dzagnidze lost to Czech IM Jackova. A tough match was Azerbaijan-France, ending in a 2-2 draw with both sisters of Mamedyarov, Zeinab and Turkan, winning.

All results round 1

Selection of games round 1

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Photos courtesy of the official website

Links

• Official website
• Open section at Chess-Results
• Women section at Chess-Results
• Games in PGN: Open section | Women section