Chess Bundesliga Kicks Off
By GM Lubomir Kavalek
FIFA, the governing body of soccer, has 208 member countries, the most of any
sport. The World Chess Federation (FIDE) with 159 nations is second. In many
countries chess is considered sport, run by national sports organizations, and
the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is seriously thinking to include it
in the Summer Olympics. And unlike in many sports, women can compete against
men across the chessboard.
Skripchenko is a member of the Werder Bremen team in the Bundesliga that has
good chances to fight for the first place this year. They won the first three
matches and are in the lead. OSG Baden-Baden is the defending champion and a
clear favorite to win it all with an impressive line-up of foreign players on
the top eight boards. OSG only played two matches over the last weekend, winning
twice, despite missing their three superstars. The world champion Vishy Anand,
the world's top-ranked Magnus Carlsen and Alexei Shirov are playing the Bilbao
Masters in Spain. In one of the matches OSG Baden defeated SG Solingen, a team
I joined in 1969 as their top player. During my 21-year stint we won 10 national
titles and two European Club championships. At the beginning, the German Chess
Federation fought the foreign players tooth and nail and allowed only two of
them on a team. Today, the foreigners dominate the top teams.
Chess is getting global and you find players from all parts of the world participating
in national team competitions in Europe. You can see Chinese grandmasters playing
on Russian teams and South American players in Spain , Portugal and France.
The top U.S. grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura played in Austria and Spain. The other
American GM Alexander Onischuk plays in Germany, where you can find players
from India, Russia, the Czech Republic, Poland and other countries.
The Ukrainian GM Alexander Areshchenko, another member of the Werder Bremen
team, accomplished an interesting feat. In the first two Bundesliga rounds,
he won two games against the flexible Scheveningen Sicilian. In the second game,
he defeated the Slovakian GM Lubomir Ftacnik, one of the foremost experts, who
issued a very
instructive DVD about the opening.
Note that in the replay windows below you can click on the notation to
follow the game.
Original
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