Euro Club Cup kicks off in Greece Friday

17 players over 2700 participating

Tomorrow begins this year's European Club Cup, a team tournament pitting private teams from across Europe which can comprise players from any country. The tournament is seven rounds and runs through October 18th. The venue is the congress centre at the Greek holiday resort of Porto Carras, a frequent destination for large-scale chess tournaments, about 125 kilometres southeast of Thessaloniki, on the coast of the Agean Sea.

An appealing destination for a chess tournament

According to the entry list, 61 teams are participating in the Open Tournament. Last year's defending champion, "Globus", has disbanded leaving as top seed the team, playing under the Macedonian flag, "Alkaloid". The line-up is impressive:

Alkaloid

The sponsor Alkaloid is a chemical company based in Skopje, which is active in the field of pharmaceuticals and cosmetics and employs 1500 people. They will compete primarily against five other teams that have an average rating above 2650, with the next highest rated being the Czech team of "Novy Bor". This team named after a town in the north of the Czech Republic, includes the top two Czech players among their ranks.

Novy Bor

The third place team on the list by rating is the Azerbaijani team "Odar Yurdlu". Here in fact all eight players actually play under the Azerbaijan flag:

Odar Yurdlu

"Odar Yurdlu" is a private university in Baku, founded in 1995. The name of the university refers to the Azeri motto meaning "land of eternal fire".

The best Russian club team in the field, coming in at fourth place on the ranking list are "Mednyi Vsadnik" or the "bronze riders" from St. Petersburg, with Peter Svidler, Nikita Vitiugov and Vladimir Fedoseev on the top boards. The St. Petersburg squad as a whole is just under 2700.

Mednyi Vsadnik

Just a notch below is the best Norwegian team, the "Valerenga Sjakklubb" from Oslo, which sports Magnus Carlsen on top board.

Carlsen's challenger at the upcoming World Cup fight, Fabiano Caruana, is missing in this tournament, having just finished a gruelling fortnight in Batumi at the Olympiad, which Carlsen skipped.

It will be interesting to see how the World Champion fares at the ECC, particularly considering that he has lost an average of 9 rating points in his last five team tournaments, and less than 7 Elo points currently separate the two players in the upcoming World Championship match! It's not out of the question that Caruana couldn't go into London as World number one if the trend continues. Of course Magnus will be highly motivated to prevent that from happening.

Valerenga Sjakklubb

Last among the "big six" is Obiettivo Risarcimentop Padova with half of its roster from Italy, albeit the bottom half.

Obiettivo Risarcimento Padova

The remaining teams are all significantly lower rated, but who knows, we could see some upsets.

Team starting rank (top 20)

...61 teams.

Women's tournament

Significantly fewer teams registered for the women's tournament — just twelve in all. "Nona" from Georgia, with the five top Georgian women, and Cercle d'Echecs de Monte-Carlo (with Almira Skripchenko, Pia Cramling and Anna Muzychuk) are the top teams.

Team starting rank

Tournament details

The matches in the Open tournament will be played on six boards. Each team can include two alternates. The women's tournament is played on four boards, with one alternate.

The seven rounds according to the Swiss system. Players receive 90 minutes for 40 moves then 30 minutes for the rest with 30 seconds added per move. Draw offers before move 30 are prohibited.

The total prize fund is 22,000 euros for the Open competition, and 13,000 euros for the women's tournament plus 5,000 euros for board prizes.

Translation from German and additional reporting: Macauley Peterson

Links

• Official site
• Official Regulations
• Full results - Open (Chess-Results)
• Full results - Women (Chess-Results)