8/5/2015 – Although often referred to as Pardubice for the main chess event and locale, the Pardubice Open is but one cog in the large and extremely entertaining Czech Open, a massive games festival in which chess is the star but hardly the only game celebrated there. This year there were shogi, go, bridge, Mankala, Zatre, to name a few, and of course chess in all shapes and form.
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The event describes itself as an International Chess and Games Festival, and a more apt name would hardly be possible. If aficionados of other games might initially be inclined to object to chess being the only one with top billing, they would soon be forced to agree that it was still the obvious star of the festival.
Just in chess, the grand festival hosted well over twenty different competitions, starting with the star event, the Pardubice Open, bringing a slew of grandmasters and masters from around the world, and these are not idle claims. Just in the grandmaster open, and the three other FIDE rated standard events, 1038 players came to compete from 45 countries, including 34 grandmasters, 50 international masters, for a total of 176 titled players.
The large playing hall was packed, and this is not even including all the activities
There was also a tent where players could relax and....
...watch live commentary
The main event was won cleanly by top seed Viktor Laznicka (2657), who started with a perfect 6.0/6, and finished with three draws to take sole first with 7.5/9 and a 2760 performance. In second, came second-seed Sergei Mosvesian (2653), tied with three others on 7.0/9 but enjoying the better tiebreak, and third was Robert Cvek.
Top-seed Laznicka (left) had every reason to be smiling. He had a 6.0/6 start!
The winner podium with Viktor Laznicka in first, Sergey Mosvesian in second, and Robert Cvek third
WGM Gunay Mammadzada from Azerbaijan proved to be the best female player and was rewarded for her efforts with an IM norm. Untitled German Josefine Heinemann, 17 years old, nearly did as well, but a last round loss limited her to 'only' a WGM norm and a 2412 performance.
This year a total of 19 international norms were distributed: two GM norms went to Indian players IM Ghosh and IM Konguvel, as well as fifteen IM norms, one WGM and one WIM norms.
Vlastimil Jansa claimed the senior trophy with 6.0/9 and 32nd place, while the best U18 prize went to Ghosh for his ninth place with 6.5/9.
Still, while this certainly summarizes the Pardubice Open, it is far from summarizing the event. We said over 20 different chess competitions? This was no exaggeration. Aside from the main open, there were three other rated opens for different ratings, such as sub-2100 and sub-1700, as well as a team event. Then there were the various rapid events for individuals (also with rating limits), pairs, plus the myriad blitz events such as the classic blitz event, with rated for FIDE Blitz ratings, the pairs blitz event, the superblitz event, and the almighty Blitz Marathon.
Blitz marathons are not new, but not all of them live up to the name quite as well as this one,
which involves 64-player round robins (yes, that is a plural) of five-minute games. One of the
participants in the Blitz Marathon, with plenty of caffeine to keep her going.
A video of one of the rapid games from the Open Pairs tournament. It was won by Stupak-Mozharov, who
are on the left, playing Lugovsky-Oganian. Stupak-Mozharov also did remarkably well in the Blitz Open
Pairs where they came in second place.
ChessBase was one of the partners of the festival and sponsored the Youth Team event
It is always a delight to see children enjoying the royal game
Naturally, there were also competitions for the various variants of the game, such as Fischer Random, bughouse, and even Polgar SuperStar chess.
Look like a normal chess picture? Take a close look at the black bishops. Welcome to Fischer Random.
Bughouse is always great fun and very popular
A video of one of the bughouse games
When you read Polgar SuperStar Chess, you might have thought this was just a marketing
word, but as you can see, it is a chess game played on a board shaped like a star
The event was not only chess though, and included many other games, such as draughts
Go, one of the most widely played games in the world in terms of pure numbers, even if almost
exclusively in Asia. It is probably the most deeply strategical game of them all. It is one game,
where despite the huge resources invested, human players are still much stronger than programs.
Backgammon on the other hand is a game in which PC programs have surpassed the best humans
What is the meaning of the tablet with a Shogi board? Is this.... ShogiBase?
No, not quite. It is not uncommon to use a device like this to record the game. Remember
that in Shogi, pieces you capture can later be played on the board as a piece of your own!
Another very popular event is the Rubik's cube championship, testing all formats from the
age-old 3x3 to 4x4, and 5x5, and more
Other less-known games included Mankala...
... and Zatre. What is Zatre? Zartre is a game the publisher describes as "dominoes for the
21st century" on the box, but really it is just Scrabble with numbers.
You can use ChessBase 13 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.
Albert SilverBorn in the US, he grew up in Paris, France, and after college moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He had a peak rating of 2240 FIDE, and was a key designer of Chess Assistant 6. In 2010 he joined the ChessBase family as an editor and writer at ChessBase News. He is also a passionate photographer with work appearing in numerous publications, and the content creator of the YouTube channel, Chess & Tech as well as the author of Typing Tomes, a powerful typing program.
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