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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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© Dr Tim Harding
Last modified:
29 September 2022
For more information about chess for over-50s, please see our Seniors news and Seniors introduction pages.
Now that all but a few of the major Senior tournaments of 2022 have been played, the focus of this calendar is moving more towards next year's schedule although it still has some gaps. The 2023 editions of the annual Marienbad and Bad Wörishofen chess festivals have just been announced; both include Senior tournaments listed below.
The big open questions for 2023 are the FIDE championships, as only one of the four has definite dates and a venue.
Meanwhile, for this year, a 5-round seniors congress has been announced for this autumn in Poole, southern England, though unfortunately it clashes with the European Senior Team Championship. For details and a link, see below.
This new event replaces the Beacon Seniors which used to be played in Devon around the same time of the year but has not been resumed post-Covid.
Newly announced events are added to this page when we find out about them. Please inform us if you know of an international senior tournament that is not mentioned. In our calendar we include only those tournaments which are described as Open and FIDE-rated, and we do not include events restricted to players from one country.
For tournaments, such as the British Championships, run on FIDE Senior rules, you do not have to wait for your birthday; you are qualified from 1 January in the year in which you reach the qualifying age.
The qualifying years for the two FIDE age groups in 2022 are 1957 (for 65+ events) and 1972 (for 50+) but some German senior organisers have different rules. Note that the eligibility rules for German-language Senior events vary. It is usually 60+ for men and sometimes 50+ or 55+ for women. Check the particular details for any event that interests you.
The German Senior tournaments calendar now includes tournaments which they list as privately organised (i.e., not by the German federation). As annual 2022 events are played, we usually find the dates for next year's event are released and some can be seen below. We also regularly search on chess-results.com and sometimes find a few events (mostly in Austria) which we add below if relevant.
Tournaments are usually removed from our listings once their start dates are reached, or soon after.
** A double asterisk in the list below indicates new or recently changed information. All tournaments listed well in advance are liable to change and of course there still remains some risk of cancellation due to Covid-19 (although no event has been cancelled this year so far as we are aware).
1-10 October: ACO "World Seniors Championships" (50+) at the Fodele Resort, Crete, Greece. Regulations and brochure (PDF) .
10-16 October: 1st Landhotel Betz Senior Cup (65+, 7 rounds) at Bad Soden, Salmünster (Hesse region). Information in German (PDF).
** 11-19 October: The Hamburg Open Senior Individual Championship (60+). Limited to 68 players; they have 54 so far. A link to the organisers can be found on the German calendar.
16-22 October: Niederösterreichische Senior Open at Spitz in der Wachau, Austria; 7 rounds, for players born 1963 or earlier. Shouldn't that be 1962? Anyway that's what it says in the invitation document (PDF in German).
18-26 October: 30th Open Saxon Senior Championships at Gasthof Coschütz, Dresden, Germany. 50+ and 65+ in one 9-round tournament with morning play. Regulations in German (PDF). Immediately followed by:
26 October-4 November: 50+ and 65+ European Senior Team Championships at Dresden, Germany. Play will be in the afternoon starting 27 October (except for the final round). Full regulations now available in English (PDF). Teams of four (with optional reserve) representing nations, regions or clubs; all members of a team must be from the same federation. Entries close on 26 August and half the hotel cost must be paid by 15 September.
31 October-4 November: A new event in England, the Poole Seniors Congress at Poole, Dorset. Five rounds, starting daily at 11am, divided into two sections (unusually, 50+ and 60+), limited to 60 entrants who must be ECF members. Information and entry form at the Poole Chess Club website. It is apparently not FIDE-rated and the time limit does not involve increments, which is rather unusual these days. The organisers might wish to reconsider these points for future years.
14-27 November: World Senior Individual Championships (50+ and 65+) in Assisi, Italy. The regulations in English (PDF) can be downloaded from here or from the official website (link above). The tournaments are divided between two adjacent venues. All hotels offered are in the Santa Maria degli Angeli district, to the south-west of the town, quite near the railway station.
14th November is arrival day and the 27th is the departure day. As usual there will be 11 rounds with a rest day after round 6, when an excursion to Siena (127km) is offered. The nearest airport is Perugia but travel from Rome by train appears to be fairly straightforward or you can pay the organisers extra money for a transfer.
** 21-26 November: 9th Lucerne Senior Open, Switzerland. A 7-round tournament for 60+ players; see the organisers' website (German language). Apparently not FIDE-rated.
30 November-8 December: 22nd Senior Open of Mecklenburg-Verpommen at Binz, a seaside resort on the German Baltic island of Rügen. The organisers' website says entries have closed at 136, and anyone else interested will have to go on a waiting list in case of withdrawals.
** 5-8 January 2023: The Irish 50+ and 65+ Championships at Dublin (two separate sections, six rounds in each). Open entry but only IRL-registered players can win the titles. For details see the Irish Chess Union website.
** 14-21 January 2023: 21st Marienbad Festival, many tournaments including Seniors 50+, at Marianske Lazne, Czech Republic, organised as part of the Czech Tour. Details and invitation (PDF in English). We personally recommend the venue, the Continental Hotel, but there are other accommodation options.
** 3-11 March 2023: 38th Bad Wörishofen chess festival, organised by ChessOrg, including a Seniors tournament. The invitation document (PDF in German) does not state the age rule but previously (so presumably again), that has been open to men aged 60+ and women aged 50+.
** 15-19 March 2023: The Klaus Gohde Memorial at Wesel-Undeloh in Lower Saxony. This "Nestorenturnier" is only open to members of the German Chess Federation born in 1948 or earlier but some readers may be eligible. We mention it because 75+ events are still rather rare and we should like to see more of them. Information on the German calendar.
26-31 March 2023: The Serpiano Senior Chess Trophy International Challenge at Hotel Serpiano, above Lugano, Switzerland. Download the invitation (which is in English, German and Italian). The views from the venue, in the hills above Lugano in the Italian-speaking Ticino canton, are sure to be spectacular, but some of the reviews of the hotel on TripAdvisor are less encouraging. The price of food and drink are sure to be as steep as the surrounding mountains too.
15-23 April 2023: The 11. International Schach-Senioren-Cup am Tegernsee at Rottach-Egern. This is a 50+ tournament. See the German calendar for more information.
** 2-11 May 2023: The second ACO Super Seniors (65+) congress at the Atlantica Belvedere Resort on the Greek island of Kos. Regulations in English (PDF) have just been released.
25 May-4 June 2023: The European Senior Individual Championships (50+ and 65+) at Acqui Terme, Italy; nine rounds. As this will be the fourth FIDE seniors event at this venue since 2015, we can imagine that many players who have been there at least once previously will opt out of this one.
26 May-4 June 2023: 33rd Bavarian Senior Open at Bergen-Chiemgau. This is an annual 60+ tournament. The clash with the European Seniors is unfortunate but the organisers are of course in their rights to stick with their usual dates.
17-25 June: The 33rd Brandenburg Senior Open at Miedzyzdroje on the Baltic in Poland. This event is organised by Germans in a region that before World War II was in East Prussia. Details will follow later; the organisers' website at present only has details of previous events in the series.
23 June-1 July 2023: The 50+ Bad Bertricher Schachtage 2023 in the Great Hall of the Bad Bertrich Kurhaus. For players born 1973 or earlier. Details will probably become available on the German calendar next year but a contact email address for the organiser Dr. Matthias Kleifges is available on that calendar.
** 7-15 July: The 8th Open Senior Championship of Baden-Württemberg at Bad Herrenalb (50+ and 65+). No PDF invitation yet but email contact details for the organisers can be found on the German calendar.
21-29 July 2023: 20th Rheinland/Pfalz Senior Open at Altenkirchen/Westerwald (about 40km east of Bonn). 9 rounds. For men born 1963 or earlier, women born 1968 or earlier. Details will probably become available on the German calendar next year but a contact email address for the organiser Wolfgang Cleve-Prinz is available on that calendar.
** 31 July-6 August 2023: 31st Open Senior Championship of Sachsen-Anhalt at the Hotel Maritim, Magdeburg. 9 rounds. Details will probably become available on the German calendar next year. The closed German Championships, including senior championships, will probably follow that.
** 2-10 September 2023: First Fränkischer Senioren Cup in the Great Hall of the Bischofsgrün Kurhaus. Details will probably become available on the German calendar next year but a contact email address for the organiser Wolfgang Fielder is available on that calendar.
** 5-13 September 2023: 20th Rheinland/Pfalz Senior Open at Altenkirchen/Westerwald, for men born 1963 or earlier and women born 1968 or earlier. Flyer with advance information (PDF in German).
No dates or precise venue have been announced yet for the European Senior Team Championships, which are due to be hosted by Poland. The ECU has now appointed its new Events Commission so perhaps we shall learn more when we go to Dresden next month.
Neither have any country or dates yet been announced for the 2023 World Senior Team Championships. It will be the responsibility of the new FIDE Events Commission to find a venue for this.
The FIDE calendar is saying that the 2023 World Senior Individual Championships will be played in Sochi, Russia. Please support our call for this decision to be changed.
Some senior players may be interested in the European Chess Union's European Amateur Championship tournaments which will be played in Perugia, Italy, from 20-30 April 2023. There are no age restrictions but sections are divided according to FIDE rating (usually U2300, U2000 and U1700). The rule for the 2022 event was that a player must not have a published FIDE rating above the cut-off point for at least one year prior to the registration deadline of the event.
The following dates and venues were just announced on the European Chess Union website. The awarding of these events was presumably agreed at the ECU Board meeting in Thessaloniki, Greece, a few days ago.
** 6-17 October 2024: The European Senior Team Championships (50+ and 65+) at Terme Catez, Slovenia. Terme Catez is an aquatic spa near Brezic, close to the border with Croatia, so flying to Zagreb may be the best option for getting there.
** 18-29 October 2024: The European Senior Individual Championships (50+ and 65+) at Lignano Sabbiadoro, a resort in north-east Italy, about an hour west of Trieste.
Not only the early notice seems surprising, but also the fact that the dates are consecutive. A subsequent change of dates for one event or the other is perhaps to be expected, although geographically they are probably close enough for somebody who wished to play both to travel between the venues by road or rail.
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