Gaia wins Portugese team championships by wide margin
11 August 2009, 21.37 CET | Last modified: 10:33 | By Editors | Filed under: Reports | Tags: League
The Portuguese team championships ended on Sunday in a clear and convincing victory for the defending champions and the hosting team from Gaia – with grandmasters Tivakov, Korneev, Hoffman, Ftacnik, rising Spanish star Ivan Lopez Salgado and the Portuguese IM Antonio Frois. Gaia won with a 100% team score – all encounters won – and an overwhelming board score.
By Nicholas Ravené. Lanier
The Portuguese team championships took place August 1-9 in the GaiaHotel at Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. The Academia Xadrez de Gaia team won all seven matches played over six boards and collected no less than 32 of the possible 42 points.
This year the Portugese Chess Federation tried a a new system, with a qualification phase in 4 groups of 4 teams, and a final phase with an 8-team championship group and an 8-team descent group – basically the Spanish system.
In the runup two teams opted out on financial grounds – or because they could not find players willing to play in August, the main holiday month in Portugal! The Amadora team finally was persuaded to play, when they found out the fine for not playing would be much stiffer than the cost of playing – they arrived with 5 players and thus conceded one point before the start of the any match. The Coimbra team was even fielding a 10-year-old boy – Pedro Matins – because of lack of players – a certain rebellious stated of mind!
The Vale de Cambra team with GM Aleksa Strikovic, Luis Galego and IM Fernando Diogo
The playing conditions in the basement of a local hotel are a bit oppressive – but regular. Whether this system will be adopted also next year – and a date in August – remains to be seen, as this autumn the presidency of the Federation will change, Antonio Bravo refusing to stand for another term as President.
In the last round Academia Xadrez de Gaia clobbered the GD Ferroviários Barreiro/Trenmo team 5 to 1 (the lone point conceded by a missing player!) but still the Railwaymen were the grand surprise of the championship – with three unknown Spanish players with low ratings and the “local” Ukrainian trio of Andrey Fernets and Vladimir and Viktor Ulyanovski they surpised everybody by playing solidly, scoring upsets and for the top boards IM norms!
The Clube Pesca Nautica Desportiva Albufeira with GM Robin Swinkels, IM Dirk Hennig and FM Michael Hammes
The third medal place was secured by NX Faro, with three extra-strong players from Granada on the top boards. José Cuenca and the Camacho brothers plus the three Algarve team members played an unexpectedly strong tournament. Fourth place was secured by the second Algarve team with GMs Appel and Swinkels and IM Hennig, FM Hammes, and the inland players Finkler, Bianca Jeremais, Luis Silverio and myself.
Co-favorites Dian de Evora and Vale de Cambra ended up on 6th and 7th reprectively in the crown group – next year these teams will problaby look quite different.
Games
Unfortunately we haven’t been able to find a PGN file with the games, but many of them can still be found and replayed at this live page.
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Congratulations Gaia!
PS: *rising spanish star
Wow, a good report, Nicholas. Finally Portuguese chess in “ChessVibes”!
Some small corrections:
- The little boy “MicroPedro” from Coimbra was born on 14th of May 2003, so he just celebrated his 6th birthday, elo 926!
- I really believe that Viktor Ulyanovskyy (39) is Vladimir’s (15) father rather than his brother (lol), the boy played a great tournament, performance 2400+
The two Algarve teams did very well indeed, congratulations also to you, Nicholas!
Hope to meet you next year as my team GX Alekhine became national champion of the 2d division.
First of all, congratulations. As a portuguese chess fan I liked very much to read the nice report on Portuguese Team championship. Indeed the pictures show what was described as the bit oppressive character of the playing room.
I think that in the regulations there was a prescription such that at least one board had to be either a woman, a senior or a young player. It seems that the funny team compositions were caused by this ridiculous rule and not only by lack of players.
I really think that if you want to develop chess between youngsters, womens and so forth there are different and more appropriate ways to do it.
Bedankt, Rini – of course we know Vladimir (actually Volodymyr) Ulyanowski is the son of Viktor Ulyanowski – these lapses happen in lightning -speed edition. There is a lot happening chesswise, and the Portuguese team championship – is mainly important for the Portuguese.
Also, the Coimbra team fielded not only Pedro, but in succession two other very small boys , to the consternation of their adult opponents. The boys did know how to move the pieces, though …
Congrats to Alekhine, oldest existing chess club in Portugal!
Thanks Nicolas, actually the fight in 2nd division was between the two oldest chess clubs in Portugal: GX Alekhine and GX Porto (…and actually Porto is two years older!), we won the historical battle 3-1, but both teams will play 1st division next year.
You were right about the other young AA Coimbra boy Miguel Martins, but the sweet 6 year old Pedro Santos made it to all the chess blogs here!
And it was good to see your “Al Shatrandj”-stand (where I bought most of my 77 NIC Yearbooks in the past) back to activity again after some years of hibernation.(I’m curious: will the administrator cut this publicity frase!?)