Favourites all win in Plovdiv

In the 26th European Club Chess Championship,taking place from the 16th to 24th of October in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, the leading clubs all won their first round matches.

The 7 round swiss will take place each afternoon this week, the first round having taken place today (Sunday 17th). Each team consists of six players plus two reserves.

There are 49 teams in the Open section, each having 6 players and 2 reserves. An impressive twenty-four players of 2700 or over are participating including Lev Aronian who plays for MIKA Yerevan along with several members of the national team: Aronian, Akopian, Sargissian, Pashikian, Petrossian, Andriasian, Melkumyan et Anastasian.

On paper the strongest team is SOCAR d'Azerbaïdjan, with an average of 2732: Mamedyarov, Grischuk, Shirov, Radjabov and Vachier-Lagrave all have over 2700. The numbers being made up by Kasimdzhanov, Mamedov et Safarli.

They won 5.5-0.5 against a team from Skopje.

Other notable scores: St. Petersburg (Ivanchuk, Svidler, Vitiugov, Movsesian) 5.5-0.5 vs. Evry (France).

ShSm-64 Moscow (Gelfand, Karjakin, Caruana) won 5-1 against Padova.

Economist (Eljanov, Tomashevsky) also won convincingly 5.5-0.5.

In the 15th version of the Women's Club Cup, each team has four players and 1 reserve. There are fourteen teams in all, the favourites being Monte Carlo (Koneru, Hou Yifan, Anna Muzychuk, Cramling, Skripchenko) whereas curiously the second seeds AVS are playing with the other Muzychuk! (Stefanova, Lahno, Pogonina, Mariya Muzychuk, Savina).

For more information go to the Official site

The live games start at 3pm in Plovdiv.

That is

4pm Moscow

2pm Paris, Madrid

1pm London

9am New York

6am Los Angeles

Live games


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