European Club Championship

[Mick Norris]

Round 2 pairings

Butrinti White Rose
Obiettivo Risarcimento Grantham Sharks

Great match for the Sharks

N Team Origin Region Fed Captain Rtg
2 Obiettivo Risarcimento ITA Gaetano Quaranta 2736
N Bo. Player T Fed ID FIDE FRtg ID Nat NRtg

9 1 Caruana, Fabiano GM ITA 2020009 2801 0 0
10 2 Nakamura, Hikaru GM USA 2016192 2782 0 0
11 3 Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime GM FRA 623539 2768 0 0
12 4 Bacrot, Etienne GM FRA 605506 2729 0 0
13 5 Fressinet, Laurent GM FRA 608742 2712 0 0
14 6 Georgiev, Kiril GM BUL 2900017 2626 0 0
15 7 Vocaturo, Daniele GM ITA 813192 2585 0 0
16 8 Dvirnyy, Danyyil GM ITA 817570 2522 0 0

[MartinCarpenter]

That does seem rather more likely than a 5-1 win Makes the live feed quite baffling though. Not just reversed colours but clearly some boards mixed up in terms of who's playing too. Webb - Alonso was decisive on the live feed.

Good result for Wells. And Webb, but then he's 35+ games undefeated at this point so you start expecting it at some point

That's a very scary line up for the Sharks to face!

[Roger de Coverly]

That's a very scary line up for the Sharks to face!

What is known about Obiettivo Risarcimento ?

They appear to have some serious interest in winning the event.

What's happened to the German teams? SV Muelheim Nord didn't seem particularly strong. Surely their bottom three boards would have limited survival value in the Bundesligia?

[Chris Rice]

It seems to happen with amazing regularity that the first round of big tournaments always suffer from "huge technical problems because of the servers". My guess is that the people hosting these sites are just not geared up initially to the amount of traffic they are likely to face and it takes them a day or two to work it out. So it was in Bilbao. Let's hope for better today in Round 2.

http://europeanchessclubcup2014.com/www ... ring1.html

In some ways for the first round of ECC Open it doesn't matter as they always pair top against bottom or the strong v the weak. The benefit is that if you are from a team in the bottom half you could end up facing someone from the World's Top 10! However, till you get to rounds 3 & 4 the results are often not very meaningful from a team perspective. From an individual perspective it can be like Round 3 of the FA Cup when the lower divisions teams face Premier League opposition and there can be great upsets.

The first round saw quite a few upsets, from the British perspective Peter Wells (White Rose) beating Arkadij Naiditsch (Gros Xake Taldea) and Peter Roberson (Grantham Sharks) beating Daniel Hausrath (Muelheim Nord) were the highlights although Grantham's team win was superb. There was also a spectacular win by Dutch IM Manuel Bosboom over former World Championship contender Peter Leko (game in link below), Rainer Polzin (Berlin) beating Evgeny Najer (Moscow), Rick Frischmann (The Smashing Pawns Belvaux) beating Chanda Sandipan (Solingen) and Santul Kosmo (Shakkivelhot) beating Alberto Martin Fuentes (Solvay).

Grantham Sharks now get rewarded with a match against the Italian team, Obiettivo Risarcimento, who won 6-0 yesterday even without Caruana and Nakamura. Should be a great experience for them. Here are the pairings in full

http://europeanchessclubcup2014.com/www ... ring2.html

http://europeanchessclubcup2014.com/www ... team1.html

The women's section runs differently though. Because there are less women players and teams, the women's section is an all-play-all, and the arbiters have made sure that the three Russian teams and the two Israeli teams will face each other in the early rounds. As a result, the first round immediately saw two top matches: Ugra-SHSM Moscow (2.1-1.5), and Batumi Chess Club "Nona" - Cercle d'Echecs de Monte-Carlo (2.5-1.5).

I have to say I missed seeing Kosteniuk. Last year in Rhodes she was changing outfits at least three times a day and she and most of the other women players attracted a lot of media interest. This is as compared to some of the male players who struggled to put on a different set of clothing more than three times over the seven days the tournament lasted.

http://en.chessbase.com/post/european-club-cup-starts

http://www.chess.com/news/anand-grabs-e ... b-cup-8471

[LawrenceCooper]

2 Rtg Obiettivo Risarcimento (2) - - Grantham Sharks (48) Rtg
2.1 2801 Caruana, Fabiano ... ... Roberson, Peter T 2403
2.2 2729 Bacrot, Etienne ... ... Rendle, Thomas E 2392
2.3 2712 Fressinet, Laurent ... ... Purton, Ben J 2142
2.4 2626 Georgiev, Kiril ... ... Murphy, Hugh W 2148
2.5 2585 Vocaturo, Daniele ... ... Varnam, Liam D 2123
2.6 2522 Dvirnyy, Danyyil ... ... Willis, Rupert 0

23 Rtg Butrinti (52) - - White Rose (38) Rtg
23.1 2377 Seitaj, Ilir ... ... Wells, Peter K 2455
23.2 0 Karralliu, Fuat ... ... Van De Griendt, Jan Willem 2352
23.3 0 Kolagji, Perikli ... ... Webb, Matthew D 2098
23.4 2024 Mihasi, Lime ... ... Barrett, Stephen J 2223
23.5 2003 Mejdini, Murat ... ... Shaw, Peter 2141
23.6 1861 Mihasi, Erald ... ... Burnett, Jim 2081

[Mick Norris]

3 Rtg Malakhite (3) - - Huginn Chessclub (21) Rtg
3.1 2777 Karjakin, Sergey ... ... Jones, Gawain C B 2664

Mickey has black against Dreev

[Nick Burrows]

Ben Purton could have a winning position Vs Fressinet after 25 moves..

[MartinCarpenter]

Or the other way round, or.... After seeing the WR games/results yesterday I really wouldn't be inclined to trust that website

Seems a little happier with the load today at least.

[Mick Norris]

You can see the games here
http://www.theweekinchess.com/live
and the colours make sense I think

Tom Rendle has drawn with Bacrot

[Tanya Jones]

And Gawain has drawn with Karjakin

[Martin Crichton]

You can see the games here
http://www.theweekinchess.com/live
and the colours make sense I think

Tom Rendle has drawn with Bacrot

no suprise there...I always knew Thomas was a good player after he held me to a draw in 2012

[Mick Norris]

Ben Purton could have a winning position Vs Fressinet after 25 moves..

A draw was still a great result

[Mick Norris]

And Gawain has drawn with Karjakin

Which is a great result with black, and presumably gains him 1.5 rating points
http://2700chess.com/ indicates that's what it it cost Karjakin

[Ben Purton]

Not easy to play a much better position against a 2700 with half of the worlds top 20 around your board...... still delighted but after Ne3 I must have a big big edge

[David Sedgwick]

I've just looked at http://www.2700chess.com/.

It's good to see Karjakin ½-½ Jones, Dreev 0-1 Adams, Rendle ½-½ Bacrot and Fressinet ½-½ Purton all among the results.

Even with Caruana 1-0 Roberson, that still gives a score for the day of 2700+ 2½-2½ England.