Seven Europchess members used the car-free Sunday of 16 September 2018 to travel to Eupen to compete in the Belgian Rapid Championship – with very mixed results: Georgi Tomov could not quite continue his series of top tournament results, without disappointing though. His chances received a blow in rounds 5 and 6 when he lost to fellow Europchessian Paula Gitu and Philippe Uhoda. He recovered with three consecutive wins to finish in shared 6th...
Mark Ouaki continues to achieve good results, also in youth tournaments. In the 7th round of the JEF tournament series, in Amay, he finished in a strong 2nd place with 7.5/9. His only defeat came against the tournament winner Pierre Vernimmen (Namur), who continued to score against Europchess members in the Belgian Rapid Championship one week later (wins again Milan Beles and Johannes Bertram, but loss against Martin Mueller).
Mixed results for a quartet of Europchess players at the 12th Tonoli Memorial in Anderlecht. Georgi Tomov achieved another strong result finishing 10th out of 130 participants. In fact, after beating IMs François Godart and Stéphane Hautot, he was leading the tournament after round 7 with 6.5 points. Then however, he lost in the last two rounds. His last round opponent Thibault Real won the tournament as only player with 8/9. Carlo Russian performed...
From 12 to 16 August 2018, another strong open in Belgium attracted several Europchess players. 220 players gathered in Bruges for the “Brugse Meesters”, among them many strong players from abroad, for example larger groups of Chinese and Indian players. Europchess was represented by FM Georgi Tomov, Martin Müller, Paula-Alexandra Gitu, and Mark Ouaki. Their results were mixed and partly conditioned if not distorted by the accelerated pairing system applied at this tournament. Georgi...
