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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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© Dr Tim Harding
Last modified:
27 February 2025
For more information about chess for over-50s, please see our Seniors calendar, and our main Seniors news page. Newcomers to 50+ chess should read our Seniors introduction page.
The 2025 World Senior Team Championships for 50+ and 65+ ended yesterday in Prague.
Our reports on the British Seniors and Irish Seniors have now received a final update.
Here are links to the official event website and the event page on chess-results. At present the games of the first eight rounds that were on live boards are available for download; maybe round 9 will be added soon.
In the 65+, England-1 agreed four fairly short draws with their opponents, Saxonia, to guarantee they retained the title and gold medals.In the end this was enough for Saxonia to take bronze on tiebreak so a good call by them. It would have been risky (near-suicidal) for them to try to win that match.
The next two matches also ended in 2-2 draws; these were France v. Lasker Schachstiftung and Italy v Sweden-1, while Israel beat Netherlands Orange. The Lasker team finished second but the tie for third between Saxonia and Israel turned out in favour of the German team.
In the 50+ championship, three teams went into the final round on 13 match points. As expected, the USA beat German club Confluentia (although on board 2 GM Gregory Kaidanov lost to IM Georg Seul) while Italy beat Hungary.
Kazakhstan had been leading overnight on game points but they had the toughest pairing, against England-1. What happened there is described on our British Seniors page. The 2-2 result meant that Kazakhstan took the bronze medals and England finished fourth.
The Czech Republic Women won gold in the female standings on tiebreak from the Chinese women. USA Women took bronze.
Latvia Women won the 65+ female title on tiebreak from the Czech women with the Polish women taking bronze.
A blitz tournament with 45 competitors was held on the rest day. Jaan Ehlvest (USA) won with 9.11 and Alexander Reprintsev (Ukraine) was second with 8.5.
A sad fact in the 50+ which only came to our attention last weekend is that the Finland top board Ari Issakainen died suddenly after winning his first round game. Out of respect the Finns did not play their round 2 match and only three of their team played in round 3 but they are continuing the event with four players who are doing pretty well under the circumstances.
If you have Seniors chess news you would like posted here, or announcements of future events, please email Tim Harding.
Back to our main Seniors news page