Italian Team Chess Championship
Held on April 30th-May 3rd in Senigallia, near Ancona
Report by Adolivio Capece, photos by Mauro Fiori
The Italian Team Championship (men and women) was played in Senigallia, a nice town on the seaside near Ancona, from April 3rd to May 3rd. 14 teams in the Master Group (men) and 17 teams in the women’s group competed.
Many Grandmasters took participation – Caruana, Macieja, Garcia-Palermo in the team of Chieti; Georgiev and Romero in the team of Padova; Hubner, Godena, Ortega and Stangl in Vimar Marostica; Ninov in Salentina; Efimov in Montebelluna; Rusev for Bologna; Palac for Massimo-Banca Nuova from Palermo; Olszewski for La Zisa also from Palermo. There were also many International Masters and almost all the best Italian players.
Among the men, the major favourite was the defending champion Chieti, but after a win in the first round they made three draws, against Bologna, La Zisa and Salento, and in the penultimate round they lost to Padova.
The team of Pesaro, where three of the five players came from the Rombaldoni family – Andrea, father, IM Denis and IM Axel, sons, was considered to be an outsider, but they were playing extremely well in the first part of the championship. They started winning against Padova, then they won against Montebelluna, Massimo Palermo and Bologna. After four rounds they had 3 points of advantage. In round 5 they lost to Chieti, maintaining 1 point; then they won against Marostica, but in the last round they lost against La Zisa Palermo!
This development allowed Padova to reach the first place and La Zisa the third, while Chieti finished surprisingly low on the 4th! IM Sabino Brunello of Padova scored perfect 7 out of 7, for a rating performance of 3099!
Here is the full story on Chessdom.com.
More information on the official website
Go Fabiano!