French Team Ch: Clichy and Bischwiller share lead

The French Chess Leagues are underway, and much like many top leagues such as the Bundesliga, the Russian Team championships, or the Chinese Chess League to name but a few, a wide assortment of top players can be found. Where it distinguishes itself from the others is that contrary to its colleagues that spread the competition out over a period of four to twelve months, the French 'Top 12' will play out all eleven rounds from May 24 to June 3 on successive days.

Eleven teams are playing eleven rounds, and will compete every day except on the day they have a Bye. Theoretically there would be twelve teams, hence the title 'Top 12', but Marseille declared forfeit and thus only eleven teams will play. The club Tours de Haute-Picardie in Saint-Quentin, France, recently promoted to the division, is hosting the competition in the Palais de Fervaques, one of the most beautiful buildings in the region.

Xavier Bertrand, Jocelyne Wolfangel and Frédéric Waquet follow their team's match

The reigning champion is Clichy, a team with an extremely long track record of championship titles. The other teams challenging it for the title are Bois-Colombes, Bischwiller, Châlons-en-Champagne, Clichy, Evry, Metz, Montpellier, Mulhouse, Rueil-Malmaison, Saint-Quentin and Strasbourg. Among the biggest names participating are Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Laurent Fressinet, and Romain Edouard on the French front, as well as international stars such as Vassily Ivanchuk, Dmitry Jakovenko, and Radoslaw Wojtaszek to name but a few.

Radoslaw Wojtaszek is one of the top players in the competition

All the teams have at least one female player, and it bears noting that by no means do they necessarily face each. Consider that in round two, GM Marie Sebag faced and defeated GM Hicham Hamdouchi, the current French champion.

GM Marie Sebag (right) scored an important win for her team by defeating Hicham Hamdouchi

GM Alejandro Ramirez has selected a couple of exciting games from the competition and annotated them. Here is one from round two, in which he comments "Black doesn't always win crushing attacks in the French, but when he does it certainly is a sweet feeling!"

The sumptuous playing hall is in Fervaques Palace

In round four, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, playing first board for Clichy, demolished Anatoly Vaisser with a fantastic combination. Annotations by GM Alejandro Ramirez.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is the third player from France to break into the world top 10

After five rounds, Clichy leads with five match wins in five, followed by Bischwiler with the same score, but worse tiebreak. Mulhouse Philidor is third with four wins and one loss, after losing to Bischwiller in round five in a very tight match. The final deciding game, with the top seven boards drawn, was Nino Maisuradze's win over Cecile Haussernot which broke the tie.

Leaders Clichy and Bischwiller will meet in round six.

Pictures by D. Dervieux

Standings after five rounds

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.