It organizes many interesting and important chess events every year. From different world and European youth championships to the women's and men's world chess championships. For example, the year 2010 started with the world team chess championship in Bursa and will end with the women's world chess championship in Ankara. There will be even more events in 2011, including the Women's European Chess Championship.
For the talented turkish chess players, the TCF organizes year-round trainings with world-renowned trainers such as Adrian Mikhalchishin, Mikhail Gurevich and others. The results can already be seen. The latest youth world and European chess championships brought many medals to Turkey by young players in several age categories. During my visit to Bursa in January I met two 8-years old girls who won several tournaments in their age-category. They said that they have special chess trainings up to 30 hours per week.
It was organized by the Turkish Chess Federation in the Nevzat Süer hall in the New Chess Federation Center. There were two teams (A - 5 foreign players and B - 5 Turkish players). The participants were IM(WGM) Angela Borsuk, IM(WGM) Sopio Gvetadze, WGM Anna Burtasova, WGM Anastasia Karlovich, WIM Nargiz Umudova, WIM Betul Cemre Yildiz, WIM Kubra Ozturk, Kaya Emel, Sop Selen and Menzi Ezgi. The tournament was played using the Double Scheveningen System with 10 rounds.
One of the participants of this event - Anastasia Karlovich wrote a very interesting article about this tournament with the photos of the event, you can read it on chessbase.com.
Here is one upset by the Turkish chess player Betul Cemre Yildiz (2244) over the WGM from Georgia Sopio Gvetadze (2342).
Black just played 39. ... Bd8, White to move.
Here is the PGN of the game. If you'd like to use it in your chess software, just copy the text characters from [Event... down to the result of the game 1-0 save the file as text and change the extension to .pgn then you will be able to successfully open it and view the game with your favorite chess database software!
I'm packing my suitcase right now. In less than 1 hour I will be leaving Bursa and will head to Istanbul, from where I will be flying to Paris and will spend this Christmas Eve (Russians have Christmas on the 7th of January) in the city of lights. The next morning I will fly back to Miami, where a couple hours after arriving I will give my first Book Signing and Talk at the Barnes & Noble in Aventura, at 7 PM on Thursday January 7.
Yesterday I had a chance to do some sightseeing in Bursa. The organizers were very kind to create a small excursion for us. Bursa was the capital of the Ottoman Empire for six hundred years. It has functioned as a bridge uniting the past with the future and it never lost the significance of being a center for trinity, while embracing humanity and homeland for various states for two thousand years. Bursa, situated southeast of the Marmara sea with a population over of 2.500.000, is the fourth largest city of Turkey.
Below are some photo memories:
This picture is taken from the Emir Khan which was built in 1340 and the Ulu Mosque can be seen through a tree.
Entering the Bedesten (Covered Bazaar) which is the most important trade center in Bursa.
In the center of Bursa in front of the Ulu Cami (Great Mosque).
I have to run now in order not to miss my bus to Istanbul.
2010 just started and interesting chess tournaments are ready to begin!
I'm in Bursa, Turkey right now. A few minutes ago the opening ceremony of the men's world team championsip 2010 took place. This strong tournament with 10 best teams of the world taking part in it, will be held in Bursa, Turkey from January 5 (first round) to January 13 (last round). The games live, as well as all the news about the tournament can be found on the offisial web-site of the tournament, here. On the photo above you can see the result of the drawing of lots. According to this, in the first round, tomorrow, on the 5th of January we will see the following teams playing each other:
Azerbaijan - Armenia
Turkey - USA
India - Greece
Russia - Brazil
Egypt - Israel
I will be in Turkey for 2 more days and will attend the 1st quarter Presidential Board of FIDE meeting. I will let you know how it went in my next posts.
I just got back to Moscow after my win at the First ACP Women's Rapid Cup in Turkey.
I would like to share with you the press-release from the ECU and the Turkish Chess Federation. This concerns the European Women's Chess Championships in classical, rapid and blitz chess and it's for 3 years in a row 2011, 2012 and 2013!
It looks it's just the beginning and we will be hearing much more about chess events in Turkey, which is great for all chess players, both active grandmasters and spectators!
Official Press Release (By ECU and TSF)
Gaziantep - the capital of European Women Chess!
5 November 2009, the President of the European Chess Union Mr. Boris Kutin and the president of The Turkish Chess Federation and the Vice-President of FIDE Mr. Ali Nihat YAZICI were the guest of the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality.
The reason of that top meeting was to plan a Project which will get an important position in European and World Chess.
The night of the 4th of November 2009, two presidents met in Gaziantep. Prof. Dr. Kıvanç Güngör (Chairman of TSF Medical Committee and member of FIDE Medical Committee) and Mr. Fatih Ekinci (member of TSF Board) met them in Gaziantep Airport. The morning of the 5th of November, the chess delegation was received by the management team of the Gaziantep Municipality. Bilateral meetings were held during the day and before the night the decision was made in principle.
The meetings went in friendly atmosphere. Mr. Boris Kutin was very happy with the high level hospitality of the Municipality. President Kutin mentioned that the Project will be an important Stone on the road map of European Women Chess.
From left to right: Vice General Secretary of the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality (GMM) Mr. İbrahim Evrim, Prof. Dr. Kıvanç Güngör, Ali Nihat YAZICI, the Major of Gaziantep Dr. Asım Güzelbey, Boris Kutin, General Secretary of GMM İbrahim Fuat Özçörekçi, Mr. Fatih Ekinci
The European Women Individual Chess Championships in Gaziantep, 3 years in a row.
The meetings were very successful. According to the agreement by 2011 (2011, 2012, 2013) the European Women Individual Chess Championship, European Women Rapid Championship, and European Women Blitz Championships will be organised in Gaziantep with a prize fund of 150.000€ each year. That price fund will be a record and ECU and TSF will try to make the events a record in the Guinness Book of Records. The event in 2011 is already confirmed since there are no other bids for the event. Considering the high prize funds, Gaziantep will be a strong candidate for 2012 and 2013 events to get it if there is not a better proposal to ECU. Gaziantep will be absolutely the strongest candidate to get the event.
Municipality Sport Club will have a dream women team!
Not only organisations will be held in Gaziantep, but also Gaziantep Municipality Sport Club will enter to Türkiye İş Bankası Chess League with a team consists of only female players. The aim will be to win the European Club Cup for women.
A very good move for women and children chess!
The Municipality will invest during the next four years for women and children chess. The city, where chess is already very popular, will open a chess museum and many international activities will be organised. The word of ‘women chess’ will be synonym of ‘Gaziantep’.
The aim of the Project is to create the image for Gaziantep to be called the ‘Women Chess City’ or let us say the capital of European Women Chess.
A photo of the top three negotiators in the meeting: Yazici, Major Güzelbey and Kutin.
The contract will be signed in Rijeka, Croatia in 2010 during the European Individual Chess Championships with the same three people.
The Rector of Gaziantep University is a Chess Player
The Chess delegation has visited also the Gaziantep University, and the Rector. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Yavuz Coşkun was happy to meet with Kutin and Yazici.
The Rector played a friendly chess match with Mr. Boris Kutin. The president of the European Chess Union mentioned that the rector’s level of chess is over amateur and that of a very good player. Prof. Dr. Coşkun underlined that Gaziantep University is ready to give any kind of support to European Chess.
The First ACP Women's World Rapid Chess Cup is over and now I have some time to tell you more about this interesting event.
As you may know the ACP (the Association of Chess Professionals) holds the ACP men and women chess tournament series. That means that almost all important chess tournaments are taken into account and the winners of these events get points which are later used to determine the top players of the year. Some time ago I made a post about the winners of the 2008/09 women's chess series. The top 8 ladies were invited to take part in the first ACP women's world rapid chess cup, together with 3 local players and one ACP nominee. Natalia Pogonina who recently gave birth to a son decided not to take part in this competition and was replaced by Monica Socko.
We played on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of December. The time control of the tournament was 20 min + 5 sec per game. There were 4 rounds on the first day which I started very well and won each game. Four more rounds on the second day which happened to be the most difficult day for me in the competition as I lost my only game in the tournament to my compatriot Tatiana Kosintseva and was very close to losing to Pia Cramling. We finally played 3 more games on the last day. All the regulations of the tournament, together with the final cross-table, perfomance of the participants and photos of the organizers can be found on the official web-site.
I won this tournament with the impressive result of 10 out of 11 and my rating perfomance was 2746!
Here are my chess impressions of the tournament. As I posted after the first day I started the tournament with 4 out of 4 with wins in a pretty convincing style over Monica Socko, Natalia Zhukova, the local Turkish girl Menzi Ezgi and Nadezhda Kosintseva. Especially I liked my game against Nadezhda Kosintseva where after a mistake from Nadezhda I managed to find the most precise way to finish the game.
After Black's mistake on the 16th move Ne7? I played 17. dxe5 and after Bxe3 we reached the following position. Before playing dxe5 I was planning to play here 18. Nxf7? with the idea after Rxf7? 19. Bxf7 Kxf7 to play 20. exf6! and get a winning position similar to the one that I got in the game. But when I was calculating this variation I suddenly noticed that after 18. Nxf7 Black has the very strong intermediate move 18. ... Bxf2+! and after 19. Kxf2 Nxe4+! and it's White who needs to think about equality here. That's why I found another move to continue the game with and this move is 18. Bxf7+! and after 18. ... Rxf7 19. Nxf7 I won in convincing style.
During the third round a very interesting endgame arose in the game between Pia Cramling and Ozturk Kubra.
Pia is playing with white and despite being a Rook up White is not able to win the game. The game continued for quite a while but at the end White had to agree that it's a draw.
The last game to finish on the first day was the encounter between Viktorija Cmilyte and Tatiana Kosintseva. The last 25 moves were played with seconds on the clock for both players but nevertheless both players played pretty well. At the end Viktorija was more precise and won this exciting game.
The position before the 28th move of White. White played 28. Rxe4!?
The second day started pretty badly for me. I lost to Tatiana Kosintseva, by overlooking a very nice combination.
I just played 26. ... Rae8? (26...g5 was better) and Tatiana found a nice way to finish the game 27. Qxe4! it turns out that I will be checkmated after dxe4 28. c4! Qb4 29. Rgh1 and I can defend from checkmate only by giving away my Queen. That's why I didn't take the Queen on e4 and tried to complicate the game after 27. ... f5 but I don't have enough compensation and soon I needed to resign.
But Viktorija Cmilyte with whom I was sharing the first place after the first day also lost the 5th game to Pia Cramling, so after the 5th rounds there were 4 players (me, Cmilyte, T. Kosintseva and M. Socko) with 5 out of 6. In the 6th round I got lucky since Pia in our game forfeited on time in a won position.
After lunch we continued the second day. I could manage all the worries after the rather shaky morning's games and won two games pretty easily.
Here is one more nice small combination by Tatiana Kosintseva against Menzi Ezgi.
It's White to move, try to find the best continuation for White.
In the 8th round Tatiana met her sister Nadezhda and as usual they agreed on a draw while I won my game and so after the second day I was leading alone with 7 out of 8.
In the 9th and 10th rounds I won two games. While my followers were losing points in their direct encounters.
This is the game between Tatiana Kosintseva and Monica Socko. It's Black to move. Try to find the best move for Black.
In the last round I was playing against Cmilyte. I was in a pretty comfortable tournament situation. I had 9 out of 10 and she was following me with 8 out of 10. So she needed to win in order to play the tie-break for the first place. After the opening I got a very good position and had a tremendous time advantage but at some point lost concentration and gave my opponent some counter-chances which she could have used at one point. But all is well that ends well and I managed to win this game and took 10 out of 11.
After the end of the tournament the organizers created for us a short touristic trip to the center of Konya. Konya is a city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. It is the capital of the Konya Province, and had a city population of 980,973 in 2008. Konya has the reputation of being one of the more religiously conservative metropolitan centers in Turkey. We had time to visit the Mevlana Museum which is the mausoleum of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a Sufi mystic also known as Mevlâna or Rumi and even got a permission to take some photos inside this building.
Immediately after the visit to the historical part of Konya we got back to the wonderful 5-stars hotel Rixos Konya where we were staying and had the closing ceremony.
I got the gold medal and a very nice cup. The second place with 8 points out of 10 was awarded to Viktorija Cmilyte and the bronze went to Tatiana Kosintseva who finished the tournament with 7.5 out of 11.
From left to right: Ali Yazici, Tatiana Kosintseva, Viktorija Cmilyte and Alexandra Kosteniuk.
At the end of this post I'd like to thank the organizers of the event, the Turkish Chess Federation and its President Mr. Ali Yazici for making this final tournament of the ACP women's series 2008/09 possible and I'm sure we will meet many more times in Turkey in the future! Thank you and see you next year, Turkey!
All the participants and the organizers of the first ACP Women's World Rapid Chess Cup.
After the first 4 rounds I have 4 out of 4 and am sharing first place with Viktoria Cmilyte.
I won all my games today against Nadezhda Kosintseva, Monika Socko, Natalia Zhukova and Ezgi Menzi Nezihe.
Tomorrow, December 2 we will play 4 more rounds and then on December 3 we will finish the tournament with 3 more rounds. The games can be seen LIVE here. We play at 11:30 AM, 12:30 PM, 4 PM and 5 PM local time (GMT +2 which is one hour after Paris and one hour before Moscow, or 7 hours after New York EST).
The organization is excellent and during the opening ceremony the president of the Turkish Chess Federation Ali Yazici told everybody that in the next few years Turkey will organize many world class women chess events, including the Women's World Chess Championship in 2010 and Women's World Team Championship in 2011.
Ali Yazici during the opening ceremony
The Playing Hall
Below are two fragments of my games of today. In both of them it's White to move, try to find the best continuation for White.
Kosteniuk - Zhukova, 1st round, White to move.
Kosteniuk - Nadezhda Kosintseva, 4th round, White to move.
Below you will find the official press-release with the rules and conditions for all the participants.
Tournament Regulations:
I.Place and date
The tournament will be held in Rixos Hotel, Konya, Turkey from November 30th to December 4th 2009.
II.Tournament’s system
The 1st ACP Women World Rapid Cup will be a Round Robin tournament with twelve participants including
- eight qualifiers from the ACP Women Series:
1. Kosintseva Tatiana
2. Kosteniuk Alexandra
3. Pogonina Natalya
4. Kosintseva Nadezhda
5. Cramling Pia
6. Cmilyte Viktorija
7. Zhukova Natalya
8. Javakhishvili Lela
- three Turkish Chess Federation nominees
- one ACP nominee
Games will be played with the following time control: 20 minutes each at the start of the game with an increment of 5 seconds per move from move 1.
In case of tie for the first place, a tie-break will be played to determine a winner.
III.Players conditions
All players are provided with a full board accommodation at the Rixos hotel, Konya.
All players are provided with a free transfer from/to the Konya airport
All players get a compensation of their travelling expenses up to USD 500.
IV.Prizes
The total prize fund of the event amounts to USD 20,000. Prizes will be distributed as follows:
Winner USD 5,000
2nd place USD 4,000
3rd placeUSD 3,000
4th placeUSD 2,000
5th place USD 1,500
6th place USD 1,000
7th place USD 800
8th place USD 700
9-12 places, eachUSD 500
In case of tie for any place accept the first, prize money will be shared equally.
V.Tournament’s schedule
Nov 30
Arrival
9 p.m. Opening Ceremony
Dec 1
11:30 a.m. 1st round
12:30 a.m. 2nd round
3:00 p.m 3rd round
4:00 p.m. 4th round
Dec 2
11:30 a.m. 5th round
12:30 a.m. 6th round
3:00 p.m 7th round
4:00 p.m.8th round
Dec 3
11:30 a.m. 9th round
12:30 a.m. 10th round
3:00 p.m.11th round
4:30 p.m. tie-break
6 p.m.: Closing ceremony
Dec 4
Departure
VI.Miscellaneous
Games will be played under the current FIDE Rules, with the addition of the ’Corsican rule’ (draw offer is forbidden).
Illegal moves do not lose the game. Nevertheless, each illegal move will be penalized by a 2-minute addition on the opponent’s clock.
In all tie-break games, any illegal move leads to the immediate loss of the game.
Tie-break system.
If two players tie for the first place, a blitz match of 4 games will be played to determine the winner. The time control will be 3 minutes each at the start of the game with an increment of 2 seconds per move from move 1.
If a match ends in a draw, two additional two blitz games will have to be played. The time control will be 3 minutes each at the start of the game with an increment of 2 seconds per move from move 1.
If this tie-break match again ends in a draw (1-1), a last game will have to be played. This final tie-break will consist of a single blitz game where White starts with 5 minutes and needs to win the game in order to win the match (sudden death game). Black, on his part, only needs a draw to win the match, but has only 4 minutes at the start of the game. This final tie-break game will be played without time increment.
If three or more players tie for the first place, a round robin (or double round robin) blitz tournament will be played to determine the winner. An exact format will depend on a number of players and will be announced by the chief arbiter. The time control will be 3 minutes each at the start of the game with an increment of 2 seconds per move from move 1.
I have confirmed my participation to this tournament!
Don't be shy about contacting me
to share women's chess news
or to propose collaboration
Best chess wishes to you! Alexandra Kosteniuk
Women's World Chess Champion
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