TEAMS OF ITALY AND GERMANY WON MITROPA CUP 2018

Teams of Italy and Germany won Open and Women section of the 36th edition of Mitropa Cup, respectively. The event took place from 30th May- 9th June in the La Castella Resort- Calabria, in Isola Capo Rizzuto, Italy.

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The Winner in the open section was already known by the 8th round. Italy would stand on the throne no matter  the result of the last round.  Italy ended the event in a peaceful manner drew 2-2 against Hungary in the last round.

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Convincingly, with 16 match points, Italy finished with the gold medal, while the draw against the best brought the second place to Hungary. The third place in the open category went to Germany, who had the same score as Hungary, 13 match points, but according to the tiebreaks, Hungary won the silver medal, while Germany the bronze.

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The Women section featured fights until the very last minutes of the event. After 7 rounds filled with harsh struggles, Germany took the first place with 13 match points.  Austria came second with 11 match points, while the third place went to Italy.

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This year, Mitropa Cup, the team event with long tradition brought together 10 European federations. The Open section participated Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Hungary and Italy, while the teams of Women section were: Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Slovakia, Italy and Slovenia.

The event was played as a single Round Robin event, with time control 90 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment for each move from move one.

All pairings, results and games can be seen on the official website of the event.

Official Website

The Mitropa Cup is the annual team chess tournament for national teams from Central Europe. The word Mitropa is a derivative of German Mittel Europa (Central Europe): MITtel euROPA. The idea of the Mitropa Cup came from Gertrude Wagner, who wanted to create a chess team tournament after the example of respective football competition, together with her husband Karl and the president of the Austrian Chess Federation Kurt Jungwirth were the founders and organizers of the tournament. The event commenced in 1976: Gertrude will organise the next twenty editions.