European Youth Chess Championship 2016 started today in Prague, the capital of Czech Republic and one of the most beautiful cities of Europe.
The Championship gathers more than 1300 participants from 49 European federations, and is played in 6 age categories: U8, U10, U12, U14, U16 and U18, Boys and Girls separately.
The opening ceremony of the event was held yesterday evening, on the parking lot next to the hotel, with the participation of the children and their accompanying persons, tournament officials and media representatives.
The present were addressed by Mr. Petr Pisk, ECU Tournament Director, Mr. Martin Huba, ECU Board member, the Tournament Director Dr.Jan Mazuch, Mr. Filip Humplík representing the city of Prague and Mr. Viktor Novotny, Chairman of the Czech Chess Federation.
After the official part the audience was able to enjoy nice performance of the Slovak group „Štiavnický živý šach“ performing live chess in historical costumes.
The first round started today at 3.00 pm (local time) and after 10 days we will have 12 new European Youth Chess Champions!
The live games can be followed on the ECU website, section LIVE, or through the official website of the Championship.
European Youth Chess Championship was last held in Prague in year 2012 with 1173 players being record at that time. This year organizers managed to attract more then 1300 players from 49 countries, most of them are from Czech Republic (185). Other numerous teams are Russia (131) and Poland (77). Among the big number of players we can find 180 titled players in total. There are ten International Masters and even one Woman Grandmaster.
Every youth championship, it is interesting to watch young talents and see them becoming chess stars later. This year EYCC has the priviledge to welcome three world rating leaders of their age – Jonas Bjerre from Denmark participating in boys under 12 tournament, Andrey Esipenko from Russia (B14) and Aleksandra Maltsevskaya from Russia (G14). Czech fans will be closely watching tournament of boys under 18 as there are three Czech players in the top 12 of starting list.
The Championship is organized by AVE-KONTAKT Pardubice agency, Czech Chess Federation and the European Chess Union, and it takes place 17-28 August at the TOP HOTEL Praha, which is the official hotel and the official venue of the event.
It is played as a 9-rounds Swiss system, with the time control 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move starting from move one.
The total amount of all prizes and presents will be 20.000 EUR at the minimum. The first three players in each group will be awarded medals; the first five players in each group will be awarded cups, diplomas and valuable prizes.