17th European Individual

[Mick Norris]

first round pairings starts this pm

David Howell seeded 18, Gawain seeded 27

Good luck to both

TWIC

official website

chess24 live

[Tim Harding]

No big shocks in round one; just a few draws.

Both English GMs had much lower-rated opponents and had a difficult day.
David Howell played a 2275 Kosovo player with Black and his French defence went wrong. He got short of time and lost a pawn but his draw offer at move 21 was accepted.
Not a good version of the Swiss Gambit.
Tomorrow he has to play Armenian GM Sargissian.

Gawain Jones had White against an FM from Monaco with a Dutch name.
He managed to win a dead drawn rook ending after Black blundered at move 82. Tomorrow he has Black against Emre Can of Turkey.

The field is basically very strong except for about 50 unrated or low-rated Kosovo players. There are not many people going for the 50+ and 65+ Senior prizes.

How many places in the next World Cup are up for grabs?

[Mick Norris]

Last time, there were 23 qualifiers from each of the Euros held over the 2 year cycle (i.e. 46 in total)

[JustinHorton]

No big shocks in round one; just a few draws.

Both English GMs had much lower-rated opponents and had a difficult day.
David Howell played a 2275 Kosovo player with Black and his French defence went wrong. He got short of time and lost a pawn but his draw offer at move 21 was accepted.

In all seriousness, until I read this I thought Chess24 wasn't working properly and had stopped at move 21.

[Mick Norris]

Gawain channeling his inner-Arkell I see

He's on board 24 today, David on 60, good luck to both

[LawrenceCooper]

From Emil Sutovsky:

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

ACP has received a number of complaints from the players participating in the European Championship in Kosovo. These complaints are mostly related to the various accommodation issues.
ECU has been informed about the situation and does take serious steps to minimize the damage. We expect the local organizers to stick to their promises and to provide the participants with the proper conditions throughout the event. ACP cooperates with the ECU in order to resolve the existing problems, and the situation shall improve significantly already today. We will keep monitoring the situation and respond to your concerns.

[Tim Harding]

No big shocks in round one; just a few draws.

Both English GMs had much lower-rated opponents and had a difficult day.
David Howell played a 2275 Kosovo player with Black and his French defence went wrong. He got short of time and lost a pawn but his draw offer at move 21 was accepted.

In all seriousness, until I read this I thought Chess24 wasn't working properly and had stopped at move 21.

I am pretty sure my account was correct as I was following the game pretty much throughout and I saw no problems on chess24 with other games.

David took his opponent out of the book by deferring ...Nc6 and then played ...a6 (here ...b6 has been previously seen) and for a while it seemed to work but Stockfish online started to prefer White slightly when he played Nd4. Then David played the strange ...Na4 (engine strongly preferred ...Ne4 which could have been played earlier) and after f4-f5 Black was clearly worse. So I guess David found a way to make it a bit messy with his ...f5 and decided the better part of valour was to offer a draw, since objectively he must have been close to lost with 20 moves to make in 3 mins + increments while his opponent had a fair bit of time in hand.

[John McKenna]

Looks like Tim has passed the Agon test in his comments about the game.

Tim, we know you have to be careful out there in the chess-journo world... but, in future if poss, it would help to have a few move nos.

[Roger de Coverly]

So I guess David found a way to make it a bit messy with his ...f5 and decided the better part of valour was to offer a draw, since objectively he must have been close to lost with 20 moves to make in 3 mins + increments while his opponent had a fair bit of time in hand.

chessbomb are covering the tournament. Here's the game

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Be7 7. Be3 O-O 8. Qd2 a6 9. Be2 b5 10. dxc5 Nxc5 11. a3 Bb7 12. O-O Qc7 13. Nd4 Nbd7 14. b4 Na4 15. Nxa4 bxa4 16. Rac1 Qd8 17. Rfd1 Nb6 18. f5 Rc8 19. fxe6 f5 20. exf6 Bxf6 21. c3 Re8 ½-½

The chessbomb stockfish dislikes 16. .. Qd8 and for that matter 19. .. f5. In the final position it is claiming an advantage for White after 22. Bh5 or 22. Qc2 .

[Mick Norris]

Gawain not winning at move 40

[LawrenceCooper]

A great result for for David against Sargissian today whilst Gawain drew with Emre Can (the GM not the Liverpool footballer).

[MJMcCready]

What happened in Gawain's opening? He moved his king 5 times.

[Mick Norris]

A great result for for David against Sargissian today

indeed, getting the 11th seed in round 2 wasn't great, and the loss makes it very difficult now for Sargissian to compete

Round 3 today

Bo. No. Name Typ Gr FED Rtg Pts. Result Pts. Name Typ Gr FED Rtg No.
25 93 GM Sanikidze Tornike GEO 2537 1½ 1½ GM Howell David W L ACP ENG 2671 18
29 27 GM Jones Gawain C B ACP ENG 2657 1½ 1½ GM Dvirnyy Danyyil ITA 2552 88

[Barry Sandercock]

Gawain Jones game interesting today. He has given up the exchange for a pawn. Not sure who is winning.

[Nick Burrows]

Seems like Howell just lost on time in a better position??