European Championship Rd1: Surprises and upsets

The European continental championship is one of the most challenging qualifying events for the FIDE World Cup. The event attracts almost every strong GM in Europe who wishes to earn a ticket to Georgia to take part in the 2017 World Cup in Georgia. Among these strong GMs there are young talents, strong IMs and other players who seek excellent chances to achieve their higher goals in chess through this event. It isn’t just about having an obscene number of title players, but the fact that in this FIDE event all norms are worth double, meaning a norm earned becomes two norms. Thirty-eight countries are represented in this event. Minsk, capital of Belarus is the host of this prestigious event. Thanks to their chess culture and having the event at home, Belarus has 71 players competing, though they are still outnumbered by their “big cousin” and next-door neighbor Russia. The Russian Chess Federation has 105 players representing the country with three players in the top 10 of the starting list!

Sergey Zhigalko is the top rated player in Belarus

Although experts and chess professionals, unanimously agree this is an extremely strong tournament, their approach to this mutual understanding of ‘strong’ is somewhat different:

While famous coach and author, GM Jacob Aagard seems to have a scaling for strength by looking at the 50th seed, yours truly seem to take more interest in the 75th and 100th seed!

The first round of a giant ‘swiss’ like this is a place where a lot of much lower-rated players get their chance to play 2600 and 2700 players, and where they also get their shot to stun their top-seed opponents. Most of the time, the outcome would regress to the expected results for the underdogs, suggested by rating differences. However, with such a large sample size there are inevitably exciting moments where David takes down Goliath.

David Navara is not facing Azmaiparashvili. The Georgian player is there as the president of the European Federation.

You do not need to look hard. In fact, the first surprised happened on both board 1 and 2 where the Czech super-GM David Navara and Dmitry Andreikin, the 2013 World Cup finalist and noted speed chess specialist were unable to get the better of their respective much lower rated opponents. Facing a GM (yes, a GM!), in the very first round, David Navara found himself in a boring Sicilian Alapin, well-known for its drawish tendency. However, thanks to his opponent’s passive play and his control over the crucial d-file (Botvinnik would have loved this game for sure!) he gradually managed to outplay his opponent to achieve a winning position. Unfortunately for him, when it came to accurate cold-blooded conversion of his advantage the top-seed failed to find a win and consequently the game ended in a draw:

Kharchenko vs Navara

Dmitry Andreikin, on the other hand seemed to have a long-term advantage where his light-squared bishop looked way better than its counterpart in black’s camp. The Finnish IM showed a great deal of resilience and managed to close the position so that the Russian had no entrance despite his huge spatial advantage. The game ended in a draw, after a long fight.

There were easily as many acrobatics on the boards as in the Opening Ceremony

Andreikin vs Karttunen

Do not underestimate your opponent’s tactical skills!

Competitive chess is becoming more and more difficult daily. Nowadays, it is hard to win almost any game with black’s pieces. Needless to say, in a tournament like this where a player needs to score +4 or +5 to secure a spot among the qualifiers, it is clear that top-rated players try their best to secure wins in the early rounds.

With such a huge field, no fewer than 100 boards are guaranteed live transmission

Thus, many times you will see players pushing hard to score against opponents who have no objection to a draw with white and sometimes they face underrated players who are hungry to score victories with white. Korobov and Grandelius, two strong GMs fell victim to these two scenarios. While Korobov was gradually outplayed and finally blundered a tactical shot, Grandelius pushed too hard and when his edge had fizzled out he blundered away material and had to resign.

Basso vs Korobov

Nils Grandelius suffered from a curious oversight that cost him as White struck with a brilliant blow.

Kessler vs Grandelius

Many young talents are there to seek their moment of glory

In the next game, the story is in the body of the game Howell-Kanmazalp.

Howell vs Kanmazalp

Naturally, it wasn't all about upsets and blunders, Vadim Zviaginsev showed his class witha nice technical win in the endgame:

Korchmar vs Zviaginzev

In the following battle, Black tried to be clever, but only realized the error of his ways a move late, and resigned on move 20.

Shimanov vs Ofitserian

Links

• Official tournament site
• All games in PGN or Replay them directly here (many analyzed)

You can use ChessBase 14 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.