German League kicks off new 2017-2018 season
10/23/2017 – One of the world's strongest team events, the Bundesliga, pits 16 teams with eight boards each against each other, on seven weekends over six months for a round-robin tournament. As each team can nominate as many non-German players as money allows, top players such as Fabiano Caruana, Vishy Anand, and Anatoly Karpov, to name just a few, regularly show their skills in the league. This season's favourite is the OSG Baden-Baden, which has dominated for more than a decade. But Hockenheim and Solingen hope to have a shot at the title should Baden-Baden stumble. On the first weekend it did not.
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The perennial favourite
The OSG Baden-Baden is reigning champion and favourite to win again. Last season the team was absolutely dominating: the OSG won all its 15 matches and scored 92½ from 120 possible board points, distancing their closest rivals by 6 team points. This season Baden-Baden nominated Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Vishy Anand, and Peter Svidler on the first five boards. Number 13 on the list of nominees is Hou Yifan, 14 is Alexei Shirov, 15 is Jan Gustafsson, and 16 is Peter-Heine Nielsen.
Hockenheim has Anatoly Karpov, Baadur Jobava, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Ruslan Ponomariov, and David Howell on the first five boards, Solingen starts with Anish Giri, Pentala Harikrishna, Richard Rapport, Markus Ragger, and Loek Van Wely.
Video presentation of OSG Baden-Baden | GRENKE Chess on YouTube
Round 1
In round 1 the OSG did not play with its top two players but the team was still strong enough to win comfortably against Schwäbisch Hall:
| OSG Baden-Baden | 5½ | − | 2½ | SK Schwäbisch Hall | ||
| 3 | Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime | 1 | : | 0 | Inarkiev, Ernesto | 1 |
| 4 | Anand, Viswanathan | ½ | : | ½ | Li, Chao | 2 |
| 5 | Svidler, Peter | 0 | : | 1 | Jakovenko, Dmitry | 4 |
| 6 | Wojtaszek, Radoslaw | ½ | : | ½ | Laznicka, Viktor | 6 |
| 7 | Adams, Michael | ½ | : | ½ | Cornette, Matthieu | 8 |
| 9 | Bacrot, Etienne | 1 | : | 0 | Michalik, Peter | 10 |
| 10 | Naiditsch, Arkadij | 1 | : | 0 | Womacka, Mathias | 13 |
| 12 | Kasimdzhanov, Rustam | 1 | : | 0 | Zpevak, Pavel | 16 |
OSG Baden-Baden seems to be travelling with its own video crew posting many short clips on the GRENKE Chess YouTube channel. Here's Maxime Vachier-Lagrave interviewed by his teammate GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov:
Baden-Baden's top board this weekend
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SF Deizisau — like OSG Baden-Baden — is sponsored by GRENKELEASING AG, the same sponsor (not surprisingly) of the GRENKE Chess Classic. As a result, some players have switched from Baden-Baden to Deizisau in recent years, but one notable change in this off-season saw rising star Matthias Blübaum move to Deizisau from Werder Bremen.
With Peter Leko on board one, Deizisau outgunned their opponents even more dramatically, and consequently won their match by a larger margin than Baden-Baden.
Sarah Hoolt was the only woman playing this weekend in the top league but, facing strong opposition, lost both her games with Speyer-Schwegenheim.
| Speyer-Schwegenheim | 1½ | − | 6½ | SF Deizisau | ||
| 3 | Kantans, Toms | 0 | : | 1 | Leko, Peter | 2 |
| 7 | Shytaj, Luca, Dr. | ½ | : | ½ | Bluebaum, Matthias | 3 |
| 8 | Yankelevich, Lev | 0 | : | 1 | Meier, Georg | 4 |
| 11 | Hoolt, Sarah | 0 | : | 1 | Heimann, Andreas | 8 |
| 12 | Farmani Anosheh, Armin | 0 | : | 1 | Graf, Alexander | 10 |
| 13 | Commercon, Simon | 1 | : | 0 | Keymer, Vincent | 11 |
| 14 | Kraemer, Enrico | 0 | : | 1 | Dautov, Rustem | 12 |
| 17 | Mager, Denis | 0 | : | 1 | Schlosser, Philipp | 14 |
Aachen's top board this year is Julio Granda Zuniga from Peru, but this weekend they went with Venezuelan GM Eduardo Iturrizaga.
| DJK Aachen | 6 | − | 2 | FC Bayern München | ||
| 3 | Iturrizaga Bonelli, Eduardo | 1 | : | 0 | Dragnev, Valentin | 1 |
| 6 | Parligras, Mircea Emilian | ½ | : | ½ | Bischoff, Klaus | 3 |
| 7 | Bindrich, Falko | 0 | : | 1 | Fedorovsky, Michael | 6 |
| 9 | Handke, Florian, Dr. | 1 | : | 0 | Schneider, Stefan | 8 |
| 11 | Zaragatski, Ilja | 1 | : | 0 | Schenk, Andreas | 10 |
| 13 | Swinkels, Robin | 1 | : | 0 | Belezky, Alexander | 12 |
| 14 | Hoffmann, Michael | ½ | : | ½ | Meister, Peter | 14 |
| 15 | Braun, Christian | 1 | : | 0 | Unzicker, Ferdinand, Dr. | 16 |
SG Solingen starts with three new players this season (Ganguly, Bok, and Loek van Wely) and is another one of the strongest challengers to Baden-Baden. They travel together with Aachen.
| SG Solingen | 6½ | − | 1½ | MSA Zugzwang | ||
| 4 | Ragger, Markus | ½ | : | ½ | Mons, Leon | 1 |
| 6 | Ganguly, Surya Shekhar | ½ | : | ½ | Kindermann, Stefan | 2 |
| 8 | Bok, Benjamin | ½ | : | ½ | Bromberger, Stefan | 3 |
| 9 | Smeets, Jan | 1 | : | 0 | Hoffmeyer, Falk | 6 |
| 10 | L'Ami, Erwin | 1 | : | 0 | Schramm, Christian | 7 |
| 13 | Nikolic, Predrag | 1 | : | 0 | Gerigk, Erasmus | 8 |
| 15 | Sandipan, Chanda | 1 | : | 0 | Eichler, Christoph | 9 |
| 16 | Naumann, Alexander | 1 | : | 0 | Lammers, Markus | 10 |
Once powered by top Azerbaijani players Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Vugar Gashimov, SV Werder Bremen is still anchored by longtime teammates Fressinet, Areshchenko, and McShane.
| SV Werder Bremen | 6 | − | 2 | SV Hofheim | ||
| 1 | Areshchenko, Alexander | ½ | : | ½ | Schroeder, Jan-Christian | 2 |
| 3 | Fressinet, Laurent | 1 | : | 0 | Savchenko, Stanislav | 3 |
| 4 | McShane, Luke J | 1 | : | 0 | Ginsburg, Gennadi | 5 |
| 6 | Edouard, Romain | 1 | : | 0 | Perske, Thore | 6 |
| 7 | Hracek, Zbynek | ½ | : | ½ | Lobzhanidze, Davit | 7 |
| 9 | Spoelman, Wouter | 1 | : | 0 | Gurevich, Vladimir | 8 |
| 10 | Babula, Vlastimil | ½ | : | ½ | Margolin, Boris | 9 |
| 17 | Koop, Thorben | ½ | : | ½ | Zude, Arno | 11 |
We'll have to wait to see an appearance by Anatoly Karpov, but David Howell at an Elo of 2698 played board one, as Hockenheim cruised.
| SV Mülheim Nord | 1½ | − | 6½ | SV Hockenheim | ||
| 3 | Fridman, Daniel | ½ | : | ½ | Howell, David W L | 5 |
| 8 | Zelbel, Patrick | 0 | : | 1 | Sasikiran, Krishnan | 6 |
| 9 | Hausrath, Daniel | ½ | : | ½ | Balogh, Csaba | 8 |
| 10 | Saltaev, Mihail | ½ | : | ½ | Wagner, Dennis | 9 |
| 11 | Vrolijk, Liam | 0 | : | 1 | Saric, Ivan | 10 |
| 12 | Warmerdam, Max | 0 | : | 1 | Buhmann, Rainer | 11 |
| 13 | Dinstuhl, Volkmar, Dr. | 0 | : | 1 | Baramidze, David | 12 |
| 15 | Rezasade, Amir | 0 | : | 1 | Braun, Arik | 14 |
Dresden vs. Hamburg was the only tied match of the first round as the teams exchanged two wins apiece.
| USV Dresden | 4 | − | 4 | Hamburger SK | ||
| 1 | Eljanov, Pavel | 0 | : | 1 | Duda, Jan-Krzysztof | 1 |
| 2 | Almasi, Zoltan | ½ | : | ½ | Svane, Rasmus | 3 |
| 3 | Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter | 1 | : | 0 | Miton, Kamil | 5 |
| 5 | Bartel, Mateusz | 1 | : | 0 | Kempinski, Robert | 6 |
| 9 | Vogel, Roven | ½ | : | ½ | Lampert, Jonas | 10 |
| 10 | Neef, Maximilian | ½ | : | ½ | Ftacnik, Lubomir | 11 |
| 11 | Maiwald, Jens-Uwe | 0 | : | 1 | Rogozenco, Dorian | 13 |
| 16 | Hoffmann, Paul | ½ | : | ½ | Sebastian, Dirk | 15 |
Norderstedt's Andrey Ostrovskiy scored an impressive double-rook endgame upset with black over GM Vocaturo, but his team dropped too many points on the lower boards.
| Schachfreunde Berlin | 5 | − | 3 | SK Norderstedt | ||
| 1 | Piorun, Kacper | ½ | : | ½ | Trent, Lawrence | 2 |
| 3 | Vocaturo, Daniele | 0 | : | 1 | Ostrovskiy, Andrey | 3 |
| 4 | Mista, Aleksander | ½ | : | ½ | Kopylov, Michael | 4 |
| 5 | Tomczak, Jacek | 1 | : | 0 | Krause, Benedict | 5 |
| 7 | Schneider, Ilja | ½ | : | ½ | Parvanyan, Ashot | 6 |
| 11 | Baldauf, Marco | 1 | : | 0 | Powierski, Emil | 8 |
| 13 | Seyb, Alexander | ½ | : | ½ | Kahlert, Thomas | 12 |
| 14 | Schmidek, Emil | 1 | : | 0 | Michna, Christian | 13 |
With so many top players every round leads to a lot of interesting games. English Grandmaster Luke McShane started the season with a little brilliancy:
Power Play 20: Test Your Attacking Chess
Grandmaster Daniel King presents ten exemplary attacking performances. At key moments he stops and asks you to play a move. King then gives feedback on the most plausible continuations. It’s the next best thing to having your own personal trainer!
Round 2
The favourites continued to win in round 2 though Hockenheim only narrowly beat Bremen.
| SV Hockenheim | 4½ | − | 3½ | SV Werder Bremen | ||
| 5 | Howell, David W L | ½ | : | ½ | Areshchenko, Alexander | 1 |
| 6 | Sasikiran, Krishnan | 0 | : | 1 | Fressinet, Laurent | 3 |
| 8 | Balogh, Csaba | ½ | : | ½ | McShane, Luke J | 4 |
| 9 | Wagner, Dennis | 0 | : | 1 | Edouard, Romain | 6 |
| 10 | Saric, Ivan | 1 | : | 0 | Hracek, Zbynek | 7 |
| 11 | Buhmann, Rainer | ½ | : | ½ | Spoelman, Wouter | 9 |
| 12 | Baramidze, David | 1 | : | 0 | Babula, Vlastimil | 10 |
| 14 | Braun, Arik | 1 | : | 0 | Koop, Thorben | 17 |
SV Hofheim got on the board in the second round.
| SV Hofheim | 4½ | − | 3½ | SV Mülheim Nord | ||
| 2 | Schroeder, Jan-Christian | 0 | : | 1 | Fridman, Daniel | 3 |
| 3 | Savchenko, Stanislav | 1 | : | 0 | Zelbel, Patrick | 8 |
| 5 | Ginsburg, Gennadi | ½ | : | ½ | Hausrath, Daniel | 9 |
| 6 | Perske, Thore | 1 | : | 0 | Saltaev, Mihail | 10 |
| 7 | Lobzhanidze, Davit | 0 | : | 1 | Vrolijk, Liam | 11 |
| 8 | Gurevich, Vladimir | ½ | : | ½ | Warmerdam, Max | 12 |
| 9 | Margolin, Boris | 1 | : | 0 | Dinstuhl, Volkmar, Dr. | 13 |
| 11 | Zude, Arno | ½ | : | ½ | Rezasade, Amir | 15 |
Schwäbisch Hall also bounced back from their first round loss.
| SK Schwäbisch Hall | 6½ | − | 1½ | Speyer-Schwegenheim | ||
| 1 | Inarkiev, Ernesto | 0 | : | 1 | Kantans, Toms | 3 |
| 2 | Li, Chao | 1 | : | 0 | Shytaj, Luca, Dr. | 7 |
| 4 | Jakovenko, Dmitry | 1 | : | 0 | Yankelevich, Lev | 8 |
| 6 | Laznicka, Viktor | 1 | : | 0 | Hoolt, Sarah | 11 |
| 8 | Cornette, Matthieu | 1 | : | 0 | Farmani Anosheh, Armin | 12 |
| 10 | Michalik, Peter | 1 | : | 0 | Kraemer, Enrico | 14 |
| 13 | Womacka, Mathias | 1 | : | 0 | Flierl, Pascal | 15 |
| 16 | Zpevak, Pavel | ½ | : | ½ | Mager, Denis | 17 |
Sharing a team sponsor doesn't necessarily engender any mercy between Deizisau and Baden-Baden, and the champions won handily in Sunday's matchup.
| SF Deizisau | 2½ | − | 5½ | OSG Baden Baden | ||
| 2 | Leko, Peter | ½ | : | ½ | Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime | 3 |
| 3 | Bluebaum, Matthias | ½ | : | ½ | Anand, Viswanathan | 4 |
| 4 | Meier, Georg | 0 | : | 1 | Svidler, Peter | 5 |
| 8 | Heimann, Andreas | ½ | : | ½ | Wojtaszek, Radoslaw | 6 |
| 10 | Graf, Alexander | 1 | : | 0 | Adams, Michael | 7 |
| 11 | Keymer, Vincent | 0 | : | 1 | Bacrot, Etienne | 9 |
| 12 | Dautov, Rustem | 0 | : | 1 | Naiditsch, Arkadij | 10 |
| 14 | Schlosser, Philipp | 0 | : | 1 | Kasimdzhanov, Rustam | 12 |
No Zugzwang, apparently, in the match Zugzwang vs. Aachen, which ended drawn.
| MSA Zugzwang | 4 | − | 4 | DJK Aachen | ||
| 1 | Mons, Leon | ½ | : | ½ | Iturrizaga Bonelli, Eduardo | 3 |
| 2 | Kindermann, Stefan | ½ | : | ½ | Parligras, Mircea Emilian | 6 |
| 3 | Bromberger, Stefan | 0 | : | 1 | Bindrich, Falko | 7 |
| 6 | Hoffmeyer, Falk | 0 | : | 1 | Handke, Florian, Dr. | 9 |
| 7 | Schramm, Christian | 1 | : | 0 | Zaragatski, Ilja | 11 |
| 8 | Gerigk, Erasmus | ½ | : | ½ | Swinkels, Robin | 13 |
| 9 | Eichler, Christoph | ½ | : | ½ | Hoffmann, Michael | 14 |
| 10 | Lammers, Markus | 1 | : | 0 | Braun, Christian | 15 |
Erwin l'Ami put Solingen over the line against Munich.
| FC Bayern München | 3½ | − | 4½ | SG Solingen | ||
| 1 | Dragnev, Valentin | ½ | : | ½ | Ragger, Markus | 4 |
| 3 | Bischoff, Klaus | ½ | : | ½ | Ganguly, Surya Shekhar | 6 |
| 6 | Fedorovsky, Michael | ½ | : | ½ | Bok, Benjamin | 8 |
| 9 | Vidonyak, Roman | ½ | : | ½ | Smeets, Jan | 9 |
| 10 | Schenk, Andreas | 0 | : | 1 | L'Ami, Erwin | 10 |
| 12 | Belezky, Alexander | ½ | : | ½ | Nikolic, Predrag | 13 |
| 14 | Meister, Peter | ½ | : | ½ | Sandipan, Chanda | 15 |
| 16 | Unzicker, Ferdinand, Dr. | ½ | : | ½ | Naumann, Alexander | 16 |
The Polish top boards played to a draw, but IM Ilja Schneider rode a passed a-pawn to victory for Berlin.
| Hamburger SK | 3½ | − | 4½ | Schachfreunde Berlin | ||
| 1 | Duda, Jan-Krzysztof | ½ | : | ½ | Piorun, Kacper | 1 |
| 3 | Svane, Rasmus | ½ | : | ½ | Vocaturo, Daniele | 3 |
| 5 | Miton, Kamil | ½ | : | ½ | Mista, Aleksander | 4 |
| 6 | Kempinski, Robert | ½ | : | ½ | Tomczak, Jacek | 5 |
| 10 | Lampert, Jonas | 0 | : | 1 | Schneider, Ilja | 7 |
| 11 | Ftacnik, Lubomir | ½ | : | ½ | Baldauf, Marco | 11 |
| 13 | Rogozenco, Dorian | ½ | : | ½ | Seyb, Alexander | 13 |
| 15 | Sebastian, Dirk | ½ | : | ½ | Schmidek, Emil | 14 |
Norderstedt joined Munich, Mülheim and Speyer-Schwegenheim starting the season 0-2.
| SK Norderstedt | 2½ | − | 5½ | USV Dresden | ||
| 2 | Trent, Lawrence | ½ | : | ½ | Eljanov, Pavel | 1 |
| 3 | Ostrovskiy, Andrey | ½ | : | ½ | Almasi, Zoltan | 2 |
| 4 | Kopylov, Michael | 0 | : | 1 | Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter | 3 |
| 5 | Krause, Benedict | ½ | : | ½ | Bartel, Mateusz | 5 |
| 6 | Parvanyan, Ashot | ½ | : | ½ | Vogel, Roven | 9 |
| 8 | Powierski, Emil | 0 | : | 1 | Neef, Maximilian | 10 |
| 12 | Kahlert, Thomas | 0 | : | 1 | Maiwald, Jens-Uwe | 11 |
| 13 | Michna, Christian | ½ | : | ½ | Hoffmann, Paul | 16 |
Standings after Round 2
The four teams at the bottom of the standings at the end of the season are relegated to the 2nd Bundesliga.
| Team | Matches | TP | BP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | SV Hockenheim | 2 | 4 | 11 |
| 2. | OSG Baden Baden | 2 | 4 | 11 |
| 3. | SG Solingen | 2 | 4 | 11 |
| 4. | Schachfreunde Berlin | 2 | 4 | 9½ |
| 5. | DJK Aachen | 2 | 3 | 10 |
| 6. | USV Dresden | 2 | 3 | 9½ |
| 7. | SV Werder Bremen | 2 | 2 | 9½ |
| 8. | SK Schwäbisch Hall | 2 | 2 | 9 |
| 9. | SF Deizisau | 2 | 2 | 9 |
| 10. | SV Hofheim | 2 | 2 | 6½ |
| 11. | Hamburger SK | 2 | 1 | 7½ |
| 12. | MSA Zugzwang | 2 | 1 | 5½ |
| 13. | FC Bayern München | 2 | 0 | 5½ |
| 14. | SK Norderstedt | 2 | 0 | 5½ |
| 15. | SV Mülheim Nord | 2 | 0 | 5 |
| 16. | Speyer-Schwegenheim | 2 | 0 | 3 |
All Games from Rounds 1 and 2
Houdini 6 continues where its predecessor left off, and adds solid 60 Elo points to this formidable engine, once again making Houdini the strongest chess program currently available on the market.
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Very nice - I hope these round for round reports on the Bundesliga continue until the end, as well as in future years!
P.S.: To answer the earlier comment: I care who wins! Gotta root for the legendary Solingen, the oldest European Club Cup-winning team still in existence!... (They're unlikely to overcome the monster that is the Baden team, of course, but maybe they'll be able to put up an interesting fight, at least.)
P.S.: To answer the earlier comment: I care who wins! Gotta root for the legendary Solingen, the oldest European Club Cup-winning team still in existence!... (They're unlikely to overcome the monster that is the Baden team, of course, but maybe they'll be able to put up an interesting fight, at least.)
oleppedersen, you are spot on! I also propose, every team should have at least 3 national players playing at the boards.
Chess must be the only sport where the league system is so uninspiring. Instead of filling teams with mercenaries, teams should use players who actually play for them, as in football. That would stimulate national interest. Any player should only play for one team, with a continental and world-spanning Champions League for the very best. Who really cares outside Baden-Baden who wins this Bundesliga?
What a monster team Baden-Baden is. Talk about depth.
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