Comments on: Bundesliga season takes off

By: Jan

Jan — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:16:03 +0000

Spoelman and Swinkels GM???????? Totally absurd if thats true. We need new titles for strong players.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:42:47 +0000

The link didn’t come through entirely, “Baden Baden” should be part of the link.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:40:54 +0000

On sponsoring for the Bundesliga, this is what I wrote a while ago at Dailydirt [it was taken from the FAQ section of the Bundesliga, which apparently no longer exists]:
“Clubs have many different ways of sponsoring: one main sponsor (e.g. Baden-Baden), chess division of a major football club (Werder Bremen), several small sponsors, “Maezen” (one person sponsoring), donations and contributions from club members. Sponsoring by towns or villages used to be widespread, but is nowadays the exception [read: little if any tax money involved].
The top teams pay all their players, most other clubs only part of the team or only the foreign GM’s.”
Being part of a major football club may not always be ideal – if Bayern Munchen’s chess department got even 1% of the money spent on football, they would have a much stronger team!?

Of course the top GMs play only “when they have nothing better to do” – for example, Anand will most likely miss the two final rounds in April 2010 (due to commitments in Sofia). And even then, clubs may only fly them in for certain key matches.
Here you can see who actually played for Baden-Baden last year:
http://schachbund.de/SchachBL/saison2008-9/bedm.php?liga=bl&team=OSG Baden Baden
Anand, Carlsen and Caruana all played just two games – maybe not a coincidence, that way they would have been allowed to play the European Club Cup for Baden-Baden. Adams played four games. If the top8 played all the matches, there would be no need for strong GMs further down the list … .

By: lazy??

lazy?? — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:03:07 +0000

Spoelman, Wouter IM NED 2546
Swinkels, Robin IM NED 2516

are these germans lazy?? these 2 have been GM for quite a while now

By: Thorn

Thorn — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:58:45 +0000

@PP
Baden-Baden has been the dominating team for years. The top players only come for important matches, though. Also, like most teams they rely on one individual who sponsors the team. In this case it’s Mr Grenke from Grenke Leasing, who also sponsors some of the Mainz events, I believe.

In several cases in the Bundesliga, teams have had to withdraw because of lack of finances or because their sponsorship collapsed. Only some teams like Werder Bremen are fortunate enough to be part of a bigger sports club, so their financial situation is stable.

By: PP

PP — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:35:17 +0000

I do not know anything about this Bundesliga, but to me it seems, just looking at the names of the players, that Baden-Baden should win this with ease…

I guess that not all players play every time?

Is there so much money in that league? If you compare this with the Dutch team championships…