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AX Gaia won all nine matches, defended their title and won the Portuguese League for the eleventh time - albeit once again without any local players.
Samuel Ter-Sahakyan travelled from Armenia to represent AX Gaia
Neighbouring club Dias Ferreira from Matozinhos raised their hopes with a tactical line-up: Jorge Ferreira, who holds a doctorate in philosophy and is a successful Bundesliga player with SC Heimbach-Weis-Neuwied, and David Martins, who has just completed his doctorate in financial mathematics at ETH Zurich, sat on the top boards. The strong grandmasters Anand Pranav and Alexandr Fier were lurking on the bottom boards.
But things went wrong on the day of the second double round. After a surprising defeat against Axat Montemor-o-Novo - which lived up to the Novo (new) in their name with an average age of 20 and finished in a respectable fourth place - Dias Ferreira were under pressure in the following match against AX Gaia and lost again.
In this DVD, Erwin l'Ami guides you through the fascinating Benko Gambit. As early as move three Black starts a fight for the initiative, a strategy that has proved to be successful in countless amateur and master level games.
A seminar was organised to encourage more women to take the lead in chess clubs
The draw heavily favoured my team, CX Montemor-o-Velho. All four of our critical matches fell in the doubles rounds, and we dropped 3 team points in the evening matches. Leonardo di Costa played very bravely on our top board.
Leonardo Costa (Montemor-o-Velho) played courageously, but the result was mixed
However, the 16-year-old from Munich did not expect to be able to earn a GM norm after a few intensive weeks at school. His highlight was two hours of analysis with Vasyl Ivanchuk, after the latter, as he himself admitted, had happily defeated him in time trouble.
Bom dia, chess legend! Ivanchuk's first outing at the top board of AX Gaia
Shreyas Royal fared slightly better than Costa. However, the 15-year-old Londoner also missed the GM norm he was aiming for.
We scored more successfully than our direct rivals against the teams ahead of us and scored a total of 50 per cent, but we had distributed the points badly. It was bitter when our neighbouring club Assembleia Figueirense, who had already secured their place, drew 2-2 with our rivals Vitória SC Guimarães within ten minutes, trusting that EP Gaia would lose their last match - only this third team provoked our slipping behind Vitória in the standings.
Top Choice Repertoire: Play the French Defence Vol.1 & 2
In this two-volume video course former world-champion and startrainer Rustam Kasimdzhanov shows you the ins and outs of this hugely complex opening.
Giant chess set in front of the Soure House of Social Innovation
The winners
The runners-up
The Estrelas (Stars) São João de Brito took third place
They finished tenth, but had the best jersey in the event: Mata de Benfica from Lisbon
Master Class Vol.17 - Boris Spassky
In this video course, experts including Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Karsten Müller and Oliver Reeh, examine the games of Boris Spassky. Let them show you which openings Spassky chose to play, where his strength in middlegames were and much more.
Dominic Cross from the Portuguese Chess Federation justified the late scheduling of the double rounds (2 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. instead of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.) with the far better online coverage. The draw was criticised. AX Gaia and EP Gaia have the same sponsor and should have met in the first round rather than the last. Axat Montemor-o-Novo and their former second team, which now competes as Afox Leiria, are even closer.
The traditionally centralised league was part of a chess week in the small town of Soure, which lies halfway between Porto and Lisbon.
In addition to the cup final, which was surprisingly won by the Lisbon club GX Alekhine after the heavy favourites Estrelas São João de Brito missed the announcement and arrived at the venue more than an hour late, the week also included the women's league, won by CX Colégio Português Aveiro, a workshop for women who want to get involved in chess and a blitz tournament on International Chess Day.
The league is traditionally the prelude to a long Portuguese chess summer. The open in Famalicão began on Monday. This will be followed by two opens in the immediate vicinity of Porto: from 31 July to 6 August you can play in Leça de Palmeira (Matozinhos) and from 23 to 31 August in Maia. September is reserved for the individual championships. On 26 October to 2 November, there will be an Open in the most beautiful part of the Algarve in Lagos. Figueira da Foz is next on 10 to 17 November. And from 17 to 28 November, the Senior World Championships will take place on Porto Santo, the bathing island next to Madeira.
| Rg. | Team | Matches | + | = | - | TB1 | TB2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AX GAIA A | 9 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 0 |
| 2 | GD DIAS FERREIRA A | 9 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 23 | 0 |
| 3 | ESTRELAS S. JOÃO DE BRITO A | 9 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 21 | 2 |
| 4 | A.XAT - MONTEMOR O NOVO A | 9 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 21 | 0 |
| 5 | ASSEMBLEIA FIGUEIRENSE A | 9 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 18 | 0 |
| 6 | EPGAIA - CLUBE DE XADREZ A | 9 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 16 | 3 |
| 7 | VITÓRIA SC A | 9 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 16 | 2 |
| 8 | CX MONTEMOR-O-VELHO/CTGA A | 9 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 16 | 1 |
| 9 | AFOX A | 9 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 13 | 0 |
| 10 | ADRC MATA DE BENFICA A | 9 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 9 | 0 |
The most interesting games:
Pranav – Dvyrny (2), Burg – Costa (3), Ivanchuk – Costa (5), Pranav – Garrido (6), Ivanchuk – Ferreira (7), Del Prado – Löffler (7) and Costa – Rushka (9)
