ChessKid European Team Festival: Turkey Is Champion Of Europe!

On January 4 the highly-awaited Grand Final of the ChessKid European Team Championship took place. The best teams -- winners of the previous stages -- battled it out for the treasured first place, and in the end, Turkey became the champions of Europe! 

Each team fielded players from four different age groups (U8, U10, U12, and U14) and were represented by two boys and two girls. Four round robin tournaments in each age category took place, with the winning team being the country with the most combined points from the four sections. The time control was 10 minutes + 5-second increment starting from the first move.

FunMasterMike and GM Anna Muzychuk provided commentary.

Here's the list of teams that qualified:

1. Estonia	7. Serbia
2. Iceland	8. Slovakia
3. Israel	9. Stockholm
4. Latvia	10. Sweden
5. Portugal	11. Turkey
6. Scotland	12. Ukraine

 

Team Stockholm playing from the Rilton Cup tournament venue.

After the third round, it was absolutely unclear which of the participants would be the winner, since four teams (Latvia, Portugal, Slovakia and Ukraine) went hand in hand, having 7.0 points each. In addition, two more teams followed, which had only one point less –- Serbia and Turkey. 

But the fourth round completely flipped the entire standings, especially the top three. Team Turkey soared to first place with 12 points and Israel came third with 9.5 points. And after this elevation, these two teams became the top 2 teams of the grand final!

Want to see a replay of all of the action? Click here!