NATO Championship

Report by Fabrice Wantiez

You can find the recap of the last NATO championship that was played in Brussels from July 4th until July 8th 2008 here: http://www.echecs-photos.be/NATO2008/

This is the 2nd time that Belgium hosted the NATO championship since 2000. This time, it was held at the Royal Military School, a very beautiful place in the center of Brussels.

This school has more than 1,000 students with student from all over the world, including Africa. But since July is the summer break, the players were able to take advantage of the accommodations.A record 17 countries competed this time with the first ever participation of Romania, Slovenia and Luxemburg.

The championship is for teams (best of 4 players) but also for individual prizes.Turkey is the new NATO Chess Champion 2008, bringing the German series of victories to an end after eleven consecutive years.

After six rounds, Germany still lead, followed by Turkey and Poland with one point behind. In the last round, Turkey showed an outstanding team performance and securing the well-deserved top rank.

The next Championship will take place June 15th – June 19th 2009 in Hammelburg, Germany.

The organizer consisted of Jan Gooris, Daniel Vercauteren and Luc Geerts. They did a fantastic job.

Turkey won also the individual placement with Serkan Yeke (2287) first with 6/7, followed by top ranked German IM Andreas Schenk (2509) and Fabrice Wantiez (2315).

Since the players of one team will never be paired against each other, this is a big advantage for strong teams.
Hosts for the upcoming years:

· 2009 : Hammelburg, Germany
· 2010 : Denmark
· 2011 : Lithuania
· 2012 : Romania
· 2013 : Italy
· 2014 : France

You can find 7 galleries of pictures but also 18 videos that you can certainly use on my site.

You can also find all the results and ranking at: http://www.echecsphotos.be/NATO2008/PairTwo/19th%20NATO%20Chess%20Championship.html

The last day (Friday) was also the Flash tournament (Blitz) and the winner was IM Andreas Schenk (GER 2509) with 9.5/11, followed by Oystein Hole (NOR, 2390) with 9/11, and Fabrice Wantiez (BEL,2315) with 8.5/11.

The ranking and round results are in http://www.echecs-photos.be/NATO2008/PairTwo/Blitz%20-%2019th%20NATO%20Chess%20Championship.html

The NATO chess championship is a very unique event in the chess world. The atmosphere is very “friendly” between the players that come every year.

The official site of NATO chess is http://www.natochess.com/There is a International Military Chess Committee that supervise organization of the NATO championship.

The chairman is Hendrik Steffers, a retired Dutch General.You can find also the games for the old championship in http://www.natochess.com/.

Best regards,
Fabrice Wantiez
http://www.echecs-photos.be/