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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:
6 September 2026
For more information about chess for over-50s, please see our Seniors calendar and our main Seniors news page. Newcomers to 50+ chess should read our Seniors introduction page. We also have pages for specific British Seniors and Irish Seniors news.
The European Senior Teams Championships concluded on Friday 4th September at Hersonnissos, Crete. Slovenia deservedly won the 65+ title on tiebreak from England-1. In the 50+ tournament the top English team did retain the title they won last year by a clear point.
The main results are summarised below but here is the link to the definitive lists of players, results and pairings. A couple of hundred games can also be downloaded from there.
It must be said at once that this was a very well-run event in an excellent venue, the Royal and Imperial Belvedere Resort, and I think everybody really enjoyed the food and facilities there and the championship sin general. Nikos Kalesis confirmed his deserved reputation for being the outstanding organiser of FIDE senior events, supported by his team.
The only real criticism is that the organisers' hopes (announced at the initial technicall meeting) to broadcast all the games live was not fulfilled. We are not sure why, but it may have had something to do with the location of the tournament hall. Only a few matches in each round could be shown and sometimes the broadcasts failed before the end of games.
It is a great shame that the entry was so small. In particular no teams came from Germany where senior ches sis such a big thing normally. With only 14 teams in the 50+ and 18 teams in the 65+, the pairings in the final two rounds after the leaders had all met, inevitably led to mis-matches. Some weaker teams did not end up with the easier games at the end that they probably hoped for.
The England Women's team were the only all-female team (in the 50+) and so retained that title also, but there were a few women playing on other teams. A fuller summary of the English performances can now be found on our British Seniors page.
Turning now to the winners, Slovenia must be congratulated on their victory in the 65+ championship; we believe it is the first time they have won.
Slovenia won seven matches and drew two (with Italy and Switzerland) while the English won eight but lost the head-to-head match-up. As Malcolm Pein said during the closing ceremony, that really should have be the first tie-break rule, but it was not and the title was in fact decided narrowly on a mathematical formula that could have unjustly gone the other way.
Slovenia's team was headed by GM Alexander Beliavsky (once a USSR olympiad team medallist) and their captain, another former USSR grandmaster, Adrian Mikhalchishin, who is a well-known chess author. However, the team's victory owed much to their boards 3 and 4, IMs Leon Mazi and Vojko Mencinger, who both scored 7.5/9 including wins against England in the crucial fourth round.
Italy won the bronze medals in the 65+ tournament by a large margin, winning 7 matches including a draw with the winners but they lost to England.
Perhaps the most surprising individual result was the win by Swiss IM Andreas Huss against Beliavsky which meant the Slovenia-Switzerland match ended in a 2-2 draw. England also had a scare in round 8 when GM Tony Kosten's KR remained on h8 until move 34, against GM Heikki Westerinen. Kosten somehow managed to save a difficult endgame to ensure his team beat Finland by 2.5-1.5.
In the 50+ championship, England-1 drew with Italy in round 4 and the two teams had nearly identical records until round 6 when the Netherlands also drew with the Italians, who won their three subsequent matches.
After that, it was very close for third place between between the Dutch and Slovakia, who drew their match in round 7. Both finished on 13MP but the Netherlands had the better tie-break so congratulations to them.
A special mention must be made, though, that Slovakia were only able to enter a 50+ team this year because (as GM Lubomir Ftacnik explained to us) the two oldest players who used to be on their 65+ squad had sadly died in the past year. So Ftacnik had to move down to the younger age group and he still had the second best result on top board.
Of the total of 32 teams that played in Crete, eight were from England, four from Israel (including two club teams) and three from Sweden. Ireland hada team in each section but Scotland and Wales were not represented.
Further announcements and photographs may be found on the European Chess Union website.
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