ECC Concludes in Rhodes

The European Chess Club Cup (ECC) is poised to start tomorrow as the players are settling in Rhodes, Greece. This is one of the strongest tournaments of the year with over one hundred grandmasters and people flying in from all around the world to participate. From each national club championship in Europe one to four clubs qualify to the European Club Cup, depending on the strength of each national event. The European Club Cup will be held in 7 rounds for both categories (open/men teams with 6 boards and women teams with 4 boards), played with the Swiss system.

Zero tolerance, dress code and Sophia rules are all in effect. Round will commence daily at 15:00 CET.

The time control will be 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move one. Players may only agree to a draw after the 40th move has been made by black.

According to FIDE regulations, the European Club Cup offers the possibility for players to achieve GM, IM, WGM and WIM norms based on 7 games - an exception to the normal rule.

The winners of the European Club Cup (currently SOCAR Azerbaijan) and the European Women’s Club Cup (currently Cercle d’Echecs de Monte Carlo) qualified directly to next year’s European Club Cup. SOCAR and Cercle d'Echecs de Monte Carlo are this year's top two teams.

The tournament had the participation of over 100 grandmasters and well over 250 titled players. The top four teams all featured an average rating of over 2700. However it was not a "2700 team" that won the event...

Open

SOCAR: from right to left, Topalov, Kamsky, Wang Hao, Giri, Safarli

The open section had four clear favorites, and they all started with a rolling over their opponents. The top four crushed their rivals on the first three rounds, but then in round four a strange pairing happened. Malachite played Novy Bor, Ugra played Saint Petersburg but Socar played Clichy 92 who only had 5 points out of 6. This were the results of this round:

Korobov gave Ugra the win against Saint Petersburg in round 4

Things were looking good for the rating favorites, SOCAR, as they took care of Clichy with important wins by Mamedyarov and Giri. The top board tie left Malachite and Novy Bor a point behind them while Ugra was the only one that also had a perfect score as a vital win by Korobov tilted the balance in their favor. SOCAR continued strong in round 5:

Topalov's 2795 performance included key victories for SOCAR

Wang Hao and Topalov gave SOCAR an important victory. Odlar Yurdu, a strong team from Azerbaijan, drew against Malachite and that meant that SOCAR was leading by a point over Novy Bor.

Round 6 was the decisive and crucial round in the European Chess Championship. Novy Bor, the underdogs and being down a point compared to SOCAR, had a single 2700 in their line-up. To put it this way, SOCAR's lowest rated player, Wang Hao, was a full 30 points ahead of Novy Bor's first board - Navara.

Things kicked off well for SOCAR as Giri demolished Bartel

Giri's destruction of Bartel seemed to give SOCAR good hopes to take the title again

However SOCAR's top three boards completely collapsed. With important wins there, like this one by Navara against Caruana, Novy Bor took the lead in the tournament.

The results on the top match was as follows:

Navara's win on round 6 was instrumental to Novy Bor's championship

After this fateful round six, it was smooth cruising for Novy Bor. Their last round opponent, Minsk, was too low rated and the massive rating differences in boards three, four and five simply cost the Belorussian team the match and gave Novy Bor the tournament win!

Final Standings

The tournament of course had its group of heroes. Novy Bor could not have won the tournament without Wojtaszek's spectacular performance with 2876 over five games. Kryavkin had a perfect result on board six, however, and he obtained the best performance of the tournament. Malachite has Grischuk and Shirov to thank for their second place.

Shirov (left) had a fantastic event, while Malakhov's was certainly not bad

It seems surprising that only one of Novy Bor's players is among the top 10 performance ratings, but Novy Bor did not crush their opponents, they simply won the matches when they had to and they won the tournament.

Zhigalko and Jobava represented Rostov quite well, one with deep opening understanding and the other one playing whatever random thing he wanted

The surprising winners: Novy Bor

Women

The women section was nowhere near as exciting as the Open. If anything, it was a tournament to determine second place while Monaco demolished everyone. The second place finisher, Ugra, was a full four points behind Monte Carlo by the time the tournament finished. Hou Yifan, Koneru and Muzychuk were simply unstoppable, and Cramling had a good performance as well. Despite this Monte Carlo did edge their opponent's 2.5-1.5 in three different rounds, but they won 4-0 in all the other ones.

Ugra obtained its second place thanks to Pogonina's brilliant tournament with a 2597 performance, but unfortunately for Ugra it got smashed in round three by Monte Carlo 4-0. Hou Yifan beat Anna Ushenina, again, and the rest of the games were simply not better for the Russian team.

Anna Ushenina had an ok event. She led her team's first board onto a silver medal, which was mainly thanks to their board two, Pogonina.

SHSM Nashe Nasledie, the second team by rating, simply underperformed and was never a threat to the leaders. However they rebounded towards the end and caught up with Mika Chess Club, both of which got 9.0/14

Hou Yifan was a monster in this tournament with a 2736 performance. However her teammate Koneru had an equally good event with a 2725 TPR.

Monte Carlo's opponents weren't helped by the fact that Anna Muzychuk also had a brilliant event...

Kateryna Lagno's 2533 performance was good but it wasn't enough to allow her team to medal

The performance table is the easiest way to summarize the event. Savina obtained 3/3 against lower rated players and that made her rating performance unbelievably high, but the next three clearly deserved their spots:

The Russian ladies didn't have their best tournament, but it was still good enough for third

Monte Carlo: Cramlin, Muzychuk, Skripchenko, the arbiter of the event, Hou Yifan and Koneru