ChessKid Baltic Festival Results!

The ChessKid Baltic Festival took place on January 8th and is the first in a series of events called the ChessKid European Team Festival! In the first match, teams from four countries--Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland--played a friendly match with two semifinals and a final round. 

Each team fielded players from four different age groups (U8, U10, U12, and U14) and were represented by two boys and two girls.

 FunMasterMike and friends commentated the Baltic Festival. Check out the replay here!

The first semifinal took place between Poland and Estonia. The final score was tight with a 5.0-3.0 result that took Estonia to the finals. The second semifinal was between Lithuania and Latvia and saw Latvia win decisively with a 6.0-2.0 score.

The finals between Estonia and Latvia nearly went to tiebreaks, but ultimately, Latvia was able to pull of the win with a 4.5-3.5 score when their top board got a three-fold repetition to secure the match. Marija, representing the U12 board for Latvia, went an impressive 4-0 throughout the event!

As the winner of the Baltic Festival, Latvia will have the chance to play against other top teams from the ChessKid European Team Festival later this year. In additional, all players for the winning team received free year long ChessKid Gold memberships. The second place team received six month ChessKid Gold memberships, and all other players received three month memberships.

Team Latvia: Winners of the ChessKid Baltic Festival

ChessKid thanks all the county captains, as well as guest commentators WGM Keti Tsatsalashvil, WIM Simona Limontaite, and GM Arturs Neiksans.

Join us next month as the ChessKid European Team Festival continues! Our second region will see teams from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania compete. The match is scheduled for February 26th starting at 6amPT/3pm CET and can be viewed on our twitch.tv/chesskid and youtube.com/chesskidofficial. Don't miss it!