European Team Chess Championship 2009, Novi Sad
ETCC teams and participants
Report by Chessdom.com
The European Team Chess Championship is going to take place October 21-31, 2009, in Novi Sad, Serbia. 38 teams have confirmed their participation until now.
Top seeded is Russia, who repeat their players list from ETCC 2007, including Tomashevsky and Vitiugov as possible reserve players.
Second seeded are Azerbaijan, who also repeat their team, but with substantial board changes and an average rating jump from 2693 to 2721.
The Olympic team of Armenia is third seeded, while Bulgaria with Topalov on board 1 and the Chessdom.com commentator GM Iotov on board 4 is the fourth seeded team of the event.
Ivanchuk and Karjakin are going to sit out the event for Ukraine and Smirin and Gelfandwill be absent for Israel.
Much is expected from Germany, who bring the heavy artillery with rating average 2658 and will surely strive to get a medal. Spain youth enters the lower boards and GM Lopez Martinez and GM Salgado Lopez join the team.
GM Tkachiev will skip the show this year, as well as GM Vachier-Lagrave and GM Bauer, as France is bringing a team that repeats only two names from Heraklion – Bacrot and Fressinet.
England with GM Adams is 18th seeded, Norway with Magnus Carlsen and Jon Ludvig Hammer is 21st seeded. The hosts from Serbia with Ivan Ivanisevic on board 1 are 17th.
The full list of the players are available here: http://www.chessdom.com/news-2009/european-team-chess-championship-2009
Karjakin played his last tournament under the russian flag (San Sebastian), so it’s difficult to imagine he could still play for the Ukraine anyway ?!
Strong event.
That’s going to be an awesome event,r eally looking forward to it!
Tkachiev doesn’t “skip the show”, but French team captain Joel Lautier did not nominate him for disciplinary reasons – not the incident in Kolkata, but he had missed (or rather, was 30 minutes late) for the last round of the Dresden Olympiad
‘French team captain Joel Lautier did not nominate him for disciplinary reasons’
Joel Lautier is big patzer.