World Senior Team Championship 2016

World Senior Team Championship, Radebeul 2016

By John Nunn

The World Senior Team Championship is a relatively recent addition to the chess calendar. Starting just three years ago, it has grown rapidly and the 2016 edition attracted over 500 players to Radebeul, a suburb of Dresden. Senior chess is nowhere more popular than in Germany, but it is developing in many other countries, including England. A few years ago, FIDE changed the age limits for senior events from a single category of 60+ to two categories of 50+ and 65+. At the time this was controversial, one of the main arguments against the change being that 50+ is not especially ‘senior’ in chess terms. However, it has proved a success and has widened interest in senior chess worldwide. Many players who took up the game in the immediate aftermath of the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match are now in their 50s and eligible to participate.

Senior chess holds many attractions, not least being the possibility to meet old friends. The environment, while still competitive, is perhaps less cut-throat than in a typical Open tournament. Speaking personally, I also appreciate the chance to avoid young players who have been reared on a concentrated diet of computer-generated opening analysis, enabling me to at least reach a playable position for the middlegame.

This event differs from the Olympiad in that teams do not necessarily have to represent countries. Although there were many national sides taking part in Radebeul, there were also teams representing cities and chess clubs. The only rule is that all the members of a team have to be registered to the same federation. This flexibility encourages greater participation and is to be applauded. Currently there are few women senior teams, so they take part in the open event, with the highest-placed team gaining the women’s title. Special mention must be made of the Mongolian women’s team. They may not have finished very high, but they fought hard and deserved their seven points. Given the difficulty even a leading chess country such as England has in fielding a women’s senior team, it’s impressive that they took part at all.

The Radisson Blu hotel provided a comfortable venue for the tournament and the playing conditions were excellent. The organisers are to be congratulated on arranging an enjoyable and well-run chess event and it is to be hoped that the World Senior Team Championship can take place in Radebeul again in the near future.

The parklike environment of the Radisson Blu hotel

Overall view of the playing hall

The pre-tournament top seeds in the 50+ section were the Icelandic team of Hjartarson, Helgi Olafsson, Petursson, Arnason and the veteran Fridrik Olafsson, who is still playing actively at the age of 81. This team is basically the same as the Iceland Olympiad team of the mid-1980s and the England-Iceland match brought back memories of similar clashes from three decades ago. England, Armenia and Germany were also expected to be in contention for the medals.

Armenia and Germany 1 both started the tournament well with five straight wins, with Germany 1 defeating England and Armenia doing the same to Iceland. A curious incident occurred in round 6. The leading scores were:

With only two teams on 100%, it seemed inevitable that they would play in the next round, but the actual pairings were Armenia-England 1 and Germany 1-Iceland. At first this seems crazy, but a detailed look at the regulations shows that the pairings were correct. There are four variants of the Swiss pairing system which are officially recognised by FIDE, and the organisers at Radebeul were using the Dutch system. This system contains an absolute prohibition against a player (or team, in this case) having three consecutive games with the same colour (detailed rules may be found here). Now the pairings start to make sense. Armenia and Germany 1 both had black (on board 1) in rounds 4 and 5, so neither could have a third black in round 6, therefore they could not play each other.

One may argue whether this is a good idea for an individual event, but it really makes no sense for a team event. Playing black in three consecutive games is clearly a considerable disadvantage in an individual tournament, but in a team event it makes little difference as the team has two whites and two blacks in any case. It may be irritating for a particular board to have multiple colours, but this can happen in any case if a reserve player is used in some rounds but not others.

The problem here is that the pairing system makes no distinction between individual events and team events, but there are genuine differences and the pairing rules should reflect this. In particular, colour considerations should be given less weight. It’s possible to imagine that the same situation could arise in the last round, and then you could end up with two players both scoring 100% but not having to play each other due to the vagaries of the particular pairing system used. I feel this is something that FIDE should look at in more detail.

The England 1-Armenia match mentioned above ended in a draw, while Armenia and Germany 1 drew their match in round 7, leaving Germany 1 a point ahead going into the penultimate round. There Germany 1 were held to a draw by the team of Emanuel-Lasker-Gesellschaft, led by Yusupov and Graf. This left Armenia and Germany 1 level before the last round, and since both won their final matches they finished joint first on match points. The first tie-break was by game points, and this put Germany 1 ahead of Armenia. England 1 came in third, just one match point behind the two leaders. Curiously, England 1 would have won had the event been decided by game points rather than match points. To no-one’s surprise, the Russian women picked up the women’s prize.

The winning Germany 1 team, from left to right: Tischbierek, Volke, Bönsch , Gauglitz, Bischoff

England 1 finished third, from left to right: Nunn, Arkell, Speelman, Flear, Hebden

The winning Russian women’s team, from left to right: Mednikova, Kozlovskaya (the widow of Bondarevsky), Fatalibekova, Strutinskaia, Sazonova

The winners of the board prize on top board: Nunn (right, silver medal, 61) together with ‘youngsters’ Plaskett (left, bronze medal, 56) and Bönsch (centre, gold medal, 57)

In the 65+ section, the powerful Russian team, led by Sveshnikov, Vasiukov and Balashov, had an average rating more than a hundred points higher than any other team, and the results were in line with this. They simply flattened the opposition and won all nine matches, although a few were fairly close. The second place was taken by Saint Petersburg, which was also according to seeding.

The winning Russian 65+ team from left to right: Balashov (hidden by flag), Zhelnin, Pushkov, Vasiukov, Sveshnikov

Just like old times. Vaganian and I meet for the ninth time,
the overall score now being three wins each with three draws

I was happy with my performance in the event. These days I play only very infrequently, and apart from a few rapid games I had not touched a chess piece in over a year. Obviously, this can create some difficulties and my first round game was exciting in a not especially pleasant way, even though I won it in the end. However, after that things settled down and a computer check of the games showed that I played quite well for the rest of the event, eventually achieving a performance rating of 2610. When you are in your sixties, openings present a particular difficulty and I no longer have the time or inclination to study them intensively. It helps if I am able to reach a type of position I have had many times before, as in the following game, which I could have played 30 years ago.

If you play very infrequently, then there’s a greater danger of being surprised by an opening line which has only recently become popular. There’s no sure-fire solution to this problem, but making sure that you have a good general understanding of the opening helps. In the following game, my opponent went for a sideline which has only been played extensively in the last few years.

An interesting ending arose in the game Bönsch-Hjartarson, which decided the crucial Germany 1-Iceland match.

The following is from Plaskett-Hebert. The game actually finished in a draw. However, at move 58 White has a difficult forced mate in nine.

Vasiukov-van Herck from the 65+ section shows that it’s still possible to spot a neat combination at the age of 83.

Your author, John Nunn (61).

Myself taking a photo of an old friend, Artur Yusupov

In conclusion, I would like to thank my teammates for contributing to an enjoyable experience, the organisers for a job very well done and the English Chess Federation for providing the financial support which allowed a strong England team to participate.

All photographs by Karsten Wieland

Gambit Publications recently produced a thought-provoking book examining how to retain and even improve your playing strength with advancing years. The conventional wisdom is that greater experience should compensate for a loss of youthful energy, but with so many of the world elite currently in their twenties, chess is increasingly looking like a young man’s game. By making a number of case studies and interviewing players who have stayed strong into their forties, fifties and beyond, the authors show in detail how players can steer their games towards positions where their experience can shine through. Interviewees include:

The section on Tiviakov is especially interesting, as it describes in detail how an experienced player can manage his opening repertoire so as confuse and outwit younger opponents.

Chess for Life can be purchased in print form from Amazon UK, Amazon US or Amazon Germany. There is also an Amazon Kindle electronic version shown on each of these pages. Finally, an app version is available for the Gambit Chess Studio reader, which allows you to play over all the moves on-screen. Just download the free app from the Google Play store or the Apple store. After that Chess for Life is available as an in-app purchase.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN (zipped) You can use ChessBase 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.