I shall be away with my 4NCL team at the European Club Cup 2024 in Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia from Sunday 20th thru Saturday 26th October.
We are currently seeded 49th from 84 teams so a tasty Round 1 pairing should be forthcoming.
The full list of teams and players can be found at the below link and the results will subsequently appear here as well.
If anyone gets really bored then I’d assume the games will be broadcast live somewhere … Chess.Com, Lichess etc
Chess-Results Server Chess-results.com – 39th European Chess Club Cup
Some pretty monster teams, as you can see, top seeds “Superchess” averaging a mere 2730 🙂-
This is, I think, our 7th sortie into Europe and they do like their far-flung corners of Eastern europe : Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania having been some of the previous locations. Hopefully we won’t have to contend with a mass outbreak of food poisoning and gangs of roaming wild dogs that Albania offered us last year !
Steve Ledger 15/10/2024.
Round 3 – Belgian team that we outrated by 100-200 points a board. We finally moved into gear and dished out a good hammering 5-1. I managed a 2nd win in a row which I’m not sure I’ve managed in an ECC before.
Round 4 – an interesting match against a Serbian team featuring a strong IM, a GM and 4 Women FMs. Andy got tonked again on bd 1 (not having the greatest event but it’s pretty damn tough on top board) but our 3 FMs rose to the task and all won. This left yours truly trying, ultimately successfully, trying to hold a N+B+3 v 2N+4 all on the kingside. At one stage I was maybe trying to sac both my pieces for pawns to reach 2N v pawn drawn ending !! But managed to draw a bit more easily so we won 3.5 – 2.5.
Pretty tough Round 5 today against a Spanish team that outrated us 100-200 points per board
Steve Ledger, 24/10/24
Captain’s day off today so a brief update. Serbia is, um , interesting and a tad challenging. Our hotel, think 1990s English seaside town. Chess venues and organisation OK, though being metal detector scanned everyday and having to open my wallet and glasses case etc to have them searched not to mention no watches, no pens seems a bit OTT though guess it may be a sad necessity these days. Probably the least English spoken place I’ve been to can also be a challenge. Anyway, chess going OK so far:
Round 1 – We were due to be paired with a team containing Firouza and Ivanchuk but Firouza pulled out so instead we played a nominally Slovenian team averaging a mere 2620. We were duly hammered though 6-0 was a bit harsh. We were possibly winning, at least drawing in bd 5 and their 2650 bd 2 left a piece en pris which our IM failed to notice.. still a messy position though nice to know everyone can do same. I was doing OK but when I felt my GM opponent was startIng to get on top I sacked a piece which didn’t qUite work out.
Round 2 – Young Norwegian team (my opponent was 12 …. is there no escape, even at the ECC! ). Andy got a bit hammered on top board which left us playing catch up. Luckily my opponent probably isn’t the next Carlsen, yet anyway, so I managed a win. The match finished 3-3 though in the last game to finish our bd 5 apparently missed a win on move 93 in a N+2 pawns each ending. Shame. I think the games are starting to appear online though WiFi is patchy here.