There are various ways to spend the days between Christmas and New Year's Eve – instead of or after present-giving and family gatherings. Winter sports is one option, others like Levon Aronian prefer holidays in the tropics. But those wh...
Many chess clubs have informal Christmas blitz events, some of these may have a rating difference of roughly 1000 points between the strongest and weakest player in a single group, but generally none are mentioned at ChessVibes. We make an excepti...
Hrant Melkumyan of Armenia won the European Blitz Championship while Georgian Baadur Jobava finished first in the Rapid tournament. The events were held 16-18 December in Warsaw, Poland. The top boards in Warsaw | All photos courtesy of the offici...
The Zadar Open was also a qualifier for the Croatian championship, and might itself be considered an open Croatian championship: 27 of 45 players in the A group were from the host country, including 8 from the Croatian top 10 – with strange ...
The Memorial E. Crespi in Milan is the strongest and biggest Italian open, with 290 players in various categories including 58 in the Master Group. Before the event, the organizers proudly announced top seed Baadur Jobava with the words "...
After Germany's surprise victory at the European Team Championship, one might have expected positive effects for German chess – even if mainstream media attention was rather limited. However, within a few days it turned out that old conf...
The World Youth Championships took place November 18-26 in Caldas Novas, a hydrothermal tourist resort in central Brazil 230km south of the capital Brasilia. The event lacked some top quality – players such as Giri, Caruana and Nyzhnyk were ...
The Malta Open was organized by ChessOrg Hoffmann Reisen, a German company specializing in chess travelling. It attracted 122 players from 22 countries, including seven GMs. Many participants were from Germany, England, Denmark and Sweden – ...
The 5th Open "Mediterranean 2017" had 13 GMs among 97 participants. Most players were from Croatia and other Balkan countries, plus a few from elsewhere including IM Kenny Solomon travelling all the way from South Africa. Second and thir...
The Panama Chess Open took place 3-7 November, 2011 (double rounds on 4-6 November). It was the first international chess event in this Central American country since the 1970s. Top seed Sergei Tiviakov from The Netherlands joined a field of 132 p...
The Bad Wiessee Open was probably the strongest Swiss Open of this fall season. Among the 460 participants were 32 GMs, with an interesting mix of young rising stars and experienced players. In the end, first place was shared between two "old...
