AX Gaia win the Portuguese League

Fatal double rounds

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.

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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

Ivanchuk, Vasyl2638

1–0

Costa, Leonardo2487

AX GAIA A

1 Divisao Soure18.07.2024[https://lichess.org/broadcast/-/-/1CDzR73d]

CX MONTEMOR-O-VELHO/CTGA A

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 d6 6.c3 Bd7 7.d4 g6 8.h3 Bg7 9.Bc2 0-0 10.Be3 10.Re1 Re8 11.Nbd2 Qe7 12.Nf1 Qf8 13.Ng3 Bh6 14.Ng5 Nd8 15.Bb3 Ne6 0-1 Firouzja,A (2723)-Carlsen,M (2872) Wch Blitz Moscow 2019 (19) 10...Nh5 11.Nbd2 Kh8 12.Re1 Qe8 13.dxe5 dxe5 14.Qe2 f5 15.Rad1 b6 16.exf5 gxf5

17.Nh4 Rd8 17...f4 18.Qd3+- 18.Nc4 b5 18...e4 19.Bg5 Bf6= 19.Bg5 bxc4 20.Bxd8 Nf4 21.Qd2 Qxd8 22.Qxd7 Qxh4 23.Qxc6 e4 24.Re3 Rg8 25.Kf1 Nxg2 26.Kxg2 f4 27.Qxe4 Bf6+ 28.Kf1 fxe3 29.Qxe3 Rf8 30.Rd7 Bg5 31.Qe5+ Bf6 32.Qe6 Bg7 33.Bf5 Qg5 34.Rf7 Qc1+ 35.Kg2 Rg8 36.Bg4 Qxb2 37.Rxc7

37...Qxa2? 37...Bxc3 38.Qxc4 Be5 39.Rd7 38.Rc8 1–0

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.

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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

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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.

Final standings

All games

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)

Links

• Full technical information on Chess-Results
• Portugal Chess Tour
• Senior World Chess Championship 2024