 |
 |
Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
|
|
|
|
|
|
© Dr Tim Harding
Last modified:
9 July 2024
For more information about chess for over-50s, please see our Seniors calendar, Seniors news, and our Seniors introduction page.
Round 7 was played this afternoon in the 2024 World Senior Team Championships at the Galaxy Hotel in Krakow, Poland.
We now have our report on round 7 and have just added a brief preview of tomorrow's round 8. The "individual performances" section at the end will not be updated until after round 8.
This page will usually describe what happened in the most recent round and preview the next one.
You can find our reports on previous rounds (currently 1-6), in reverse order on a separate page. This is to stop this page growing too big. The round 6 report, which was previously on this page, can now be found there.
We are now getting close to the final decisions in these championships. Many of the top teams have now met but there is still scope for the standings to change if there are major upsets in the last two rounds, as sometimes does happen.
It seems that England-2 have done their first team a huge favour by beating the overnight leaders, Strasbourg, by 2.5-1.5. FM Tony Stebbings won against IM Louis Roos on board 3 and the other games were drawn if Lichess can be believed. (At one point it looked as if England would win board 1 but lose board 4.)
The next two matches will have an equally huge bearing on the fight for medals: England-1 beat Italy after their top boards GMs Nunn and Kosten agreed fairly quick draws leaving IM Paul Littlewood and FM Terry Chapman to fight on. Chapman delivered the full point on board 4.
The Slovaks really needed to win their match against Israel-1 because they were currently out of the medal positions but although Peter Petran won for them on 4, they lost on 2 and 3 and board 1 was drawn.
In the other match involving teams with 8MP, Eppingen, who have GM Lothar Vogt on top board, won 2.5-1.5 against Ireland-1.
This all means the standings at the top have changed; they are now as follows: 12MP: England-1; 11MP: Cercle d'Echecs de Strasbourg and Israel-1; 10MP: England-2 and Germany Eppingen.
Lower down the list, two boards were continuing late in the match Germany Zaehringen Reloaded eventually beat Lower Silesia 4-0, bringing Wieslaw Janocha's good run to an end.
Latvia Women drew with the local Malopolska VIP team which was enough to assure them female gold with two rounds to spare.
Ireland-2 and Ireland-3 ended in four fairly quick draws. England-3 drew 2-2 with Denmark SK2012 while England-4 had a narrow win over Scotland. Finland beat Sweden, New Zealand drew with Poland Women, and Wales beat USA Women. Israel-2 had the bye as all teams below them had it already. This is worth one match point and two game points in the standings.
The big top match here was Iceland v USA. After the top board clash between GMs Hjartarson and Ehlvest was drawn early, the Americans took boards 2 and 3 to win 3-1. So the lead changes,
Next comes England-1 v Italy which the English really needed to win. They shared the points on boards 2-4 (wins for Godena and Flear balancing out) but Michael Adams's long attempt to convert an extra pawn in a rook ending against Alberto David ended in a draw, so that was 2-2.
There was also a long game to decide the match Germany-1 v Slovakia, and the latter scored a narrow victory in the end.
Israel Rishon Lezion beat Canada 3-1 while England-2 beat England Women 2.5-1.5 after FM Stephen Dishman won a long game against WIM Ingrid Lauterbach.
As Estonia Women (the only other women's team on 7MP overnight) also lost (to Lubeck Chess Club), England-3 beat Hungary Women, and Brazil beat USA Women, the female medals remain very much up for grabs. The only women's team to win today was Germany while Lithuania Women drew with Ireland to improve their position slightly.
The leading standings in the 50+ are now as follows: 12MP: USA: 11MP: Iceland and Italy; 10MP: England-1, England-2, Slovakia, and Israel Rishon Lezion. With most of them having met each other and no team now on 9, at least one of those will have to float down to a team on 8MP. The leading women's teams are on 7.
Other matches in the middle range of the tournament saw USA Too beat South Africa, Scotland draw with Germany Graal and Poland Caissa v Oslo.
Lower down the list, the Jhunjnuwala brothers beat Guernsey and England-4 beat the Maolopolska Team.
Preview of Round 8 (65+)
This may be written up further tomorrow because the draw was only posted online a few minutes before the start of Spain v France in the Euros soccer.
England-1 must play England-2 because they already met all the others in the leading group. The other two crucial matches are Israel-1 v Germany Eppingen and Strasbourg v Zaehringen Reloaded.
Among the mid-table match-ups are Ireland v Finland, England-3 v Italy.
England-4 will play Poland Zaglebie, Wales meet Israel-2 and it's New Zealand v Scotland. Ireland-2 play the USA Women and our third team play the Polish Women. Northern Germany, despite having 5 match points, are assigned the bye and there will be one unhappy team to get it in the last round.
Preview of Round 8 (50+)
USA v Israel is the top match.
Since the top two England teams in this tournament already met, the other important match-ups are:
Slovakia v Iceland; Italy v England-2; England-1 v Germany-1.
The important pairings for the female contenders are: Germany Graal v Estonia Women; England-3 v England Women; Wales v USA Women; Lithuania Women v USA 5 Brothers and Hungary Women v Germany Women.
Other pairings include Oslo v Scotland, South Africa v Ireland and the Luxemburg club v Guernsey.
This section only considers results to round 6 and will be revised after round 8.
Looking down the list of individual performers, we see in the 50+ that a few players have 4.5/5, notavbly Michael Adams who has met very strong opposition on top board. Margeir Petursson and Throstur Thorhallsson have the same score for Iceland, as has Italy's reserve, IM Carlo d'Amore.
The Slovaks have no reserve. Their top two, GM Martin Mrva and FM Karol Motuz, both have 5/6 so far and the latter has a chance of an IM norm. Motuz will certainly meet a GM in round 7 but will also need to meet another IM or GM and probably to score 2.5/3 though 2/3 could be enough depending on opponents' ratings.
In the 65+, IM Louis Roos, the Strasbourg number 4, has 6/6 though most of his games have been on board 3. Italian reserve FM Ivano Ceschia has 5/5.
The next highest score so far is 4.5 which a few players have achieved in six games (including John Nunn and Tony Kosten) but two players have it in five games: Gerhard Kiefer on 4 for Zaehringen Reloaded and FM Wieslaw Janocha for Lower Silesia, both mid-table teams. Janocha currently leads the board 1 standings.
Text to follow **
Text to follow **
Text to follow **
Back to our Main report on World Senior Teams 2024
Back to our report on the earlier rounds
Back to our Seniors news page