The 2025 European Individual Chess Championship commenced today in Eforie Nord, Romania!
The first round of the event was opened by Secretary General of the Romanian Chess Federation Mr. Gabriel Grecescu, ECU Tournament Director Mr. Petr Pisk, and the representative of the Romanian Special Tele-Communication Service and Institutional Partner of the Romanian Chess Federation Mr. Rucareanu.
Mr. Rucareanu made a first ceremonial move in the top bord game between IM Nicolai Kistrup (DEN, 2356) and GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac (ROU, 2692) to inaugurate the competition.
The event started with exciting fights on the boards, and the first round was marked by several upsets.
Playing on the top board, IM Nicolai Kistrup (DEN, 2356) hold the top-seeded GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac (ROU, 2692) to a draw after intense endgame and fearsome time trouble. Both players played nearly 20 moves with seconds on the clock, but they were precise and eventually went for a threefold repetition, agreeing to a draw.
The major upset of the Round 1 happened in a game between FM Roy Vagman (ISR, 2300) and GM Alexander Donchenko (GER, 2627). A very positional game went wrong for Donchenko in the late middlegame where the German representative blundered with 30…de5? and lost a piece a couple of moves later.
Some of the other top seeds couldn’t prevail and drew their games, including GM Ivan Cheparinov (BUl, 2646) who drew as Black against FM Hayk Yeritsyan (ARM, 2323), GM Rasmus Svane (GER, 2627) was Black against FM Piotr Brzezina (POL, 2298) and the game finished in a draw, GM Mateusz Bartel (POL, 261) played a draw against FM Michal Fiedorek (POL, 2295), GM Alan Pichot (ESP, 2613) drew against FM Teodor-Cosmin Nedelcu (ROU, 2291).
All results from the first round can be found here.
Live games and live video broadcast with commentaries by GM Alojzije Jankovic and WIM Lena Govedarica was available through the ECU TV platform and ECU YouTube channel.
The second round starts tomorrow at 15:00 local time. Pairings can be found here, and live broadcast can be followed on the ECU YouTube.