The Low-Key Chess Event That's Actually One Of The Best
The chess calendar has been chock-a-block with jazzy, high-profile events in recent weeks—so much so that we've been struggling to keep up.
There's been FIDE's elite Grand Swiss, last weekend's Checkmate: USA vs India match and now an exhibition match in Saint Louis between the legendary world champions GM Garry Kasparov and GM Viswanathan Anand. It's been a treat.
But going under the radar, perhaps, this week is a relatively low key event that's unlikely to hit the headlines, and it's one of the best of the year.
The biennial European Team Championships, organized by the European Chess Union, is a fixture of the European chess calendar and one of the most important events on the circuit.
This year, as usual, it's jam-packed with names any aspiring chess afficionado will recognize.
True, you're unlikely to see a super grandmaster lobbing a king into a baying crowd and then an almighty row afterwards. The Euros are just not like that.
You will, however, see an army of big gun GMs in action like Anish Giri, Vincent Keymer, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Richard Rapport, Vladimir Fedoseev, Jorden Van Foreest, Matthias Bluebaum, and Kirill Alekseenko.
There's also legends of the game like GMs Michael Adams, Ruslan Ponomariov, Kosteniuk, Alexandra Kosteniuk and Alexei Shirov.
The guy who fell off his chair, GM Pawel Teclaf, is there, along with players with interesting human stories like popular Dutch GM Erwin L'Ami, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease two years ago.
The field is full of young hotshots representing their country like English GM Shreyas Royal and 10-year-old WGM Bodhana Sivanandan.
And also creative genius GM Baadur Jobava and familiar faces likes chess commentator IM Jovanka Houska.
Overall, it's an absolute feast of chess that will throw up tons of exciting games and storylines. The fact Europe's best, and the world's, GM Magnus Carlsen isn't there isn't a problem.
As of Thursday, it's heading towards Round 4 with only two teams in the Open having recorded perfect scores, the defending champions Serbia, and Greece.
The match between France and Azerbaijan in the Women's section saw a bit of drama with a mate-in-one blunder on the fourth board.
In a winning position, WIM Ayan Allaverdiyeva walked into mate-in-one against IM Pauline Guichard—a very rare moment at this level. It left both players shocked and rooted to their seats afterwards.
Here's the game:
That was unexpected!
All results, rankings and pairings can be found here. You can watch Round 4 with commentary here.
So enjoy the European Team Chess Championships. There's unlikely to be a king thrown into the crowd like there was in Texas, this is a far more traditional event, but it's well worth checking out.