As mentioned earlier in the year, Tim Harding has been trying to organise individuals for FIDE Senior Team chess events in 2016. Well, now the time has come for the first of those events and Tim has kindly taken some time out from his preparation to write a piece for us on the event. The event in question will be the World Team Championship 65+ 2016 in Dresden. Here is Tim's preview of the event:
This is the first time Ireland has sent a veterans' team to any FIDE senior team event. We shall be playing in the 65+ tournament.
We won't know for sure exactly who is playing until the captains' meeting on the morning of the 26th but the provisional entries for the 50+ and 65+ team tournaments are posted on the above website.
Our line up is: CM Tim Harding (Dublin University), Ray Byrne (Gonzaga), Patrick Daly and Jim Murray (both Lucan), and our oldest team member, Matt O'Leary, who lives in Sweden but has played in Irish Championships several times in the past. Jim is our youngest player, not yet 65 but as his birthday falls before the end of the year he is eligible.
At present there are 58 teams entered in the 50+ tournament and 51 in the 65+ tournament, well up on last year's numbers. Eleven of the teams in our tournament are national squads, some are national second or third teams, and the rest are regional or club teams, mostly German.
There are some famous players competing in the 50+ tournament. Russia traditionally send only a women's team to that event so this year top seeds are Iceland (led by GM Johann Hjartarson who recently won the Icelandic Championship). Second seeds are England-1 (John Nunn, Jon Speelman, Mark Hebden, Glenn Flear and Keith Arkell) but there are several other quite strong squads. Rafael Vaganian leads the Armenian team while the team of the Emmanuel Lasker Gesellschaft, led by chess legend Artur Yusupov, is even seeded higher than the official German first team.
These are both 9-round Swiss tournaments with teams of four plus optional reserve (like the Olympiad). Round 1 starts at 2pm on Sunday 26th and the other rounds will start at 9.30am, concluding on Monday 4 July.
The top seeds in our tournament are Russia, led by grandmasters Evgeny Sveshnikov and Evgeni Vasiukov. We don't expect to play Russia or feature on the live boards but we hope to cause a few upsets and finish above our seeding.
The website for the championships is http://schachfestival.de/world-team-championship-50-65-2016-en.html