The Senior World Championship started today in Terassini, Italy. Many heroes and legends of the royal sport are taking part, including some strong German players.
Attentive readers of this blog will not have noticed that we often find the situation at youth world championships to be unbearable. This was most recently demonstrated by the spontaneous change in lap times at the Cadet World Championships in Egypt. The Junior World Championships in Mexico were also, to put it mildly, hardly a model for a travel guide.
Senior championships there are the complete opposite. They usually take place in luxurious hotels and are well organized from start to finish. Because even if this may not apply to every grandmaster senior player, the senior who has been playing chess for 40 years and now wants to pursue his hobby in beautiful places in retirement usually brings money with him.
In the seniors 50+ group, Michael Adams is at the top of the starting rankings. Until recently, Adams was considered an absolute world-class player. He has since lost 70 Elo points, but still has 2670 Elo!
The German colours are represented by Frank Holzke, who recently published a book that is particularly popular among chess trainers: From Position to Move
In the seniors 65+, a German is even seeded 4th. Rainer Knaak, who has been very active with our partner Chessbase in recent years, is now increasingly taking part in senior tournaments again. He will certainly have a say in the title race. John Nunn is seeded 1st here, followed by Rafael Vaganian and Lubomir Ftacnik.
For the women, there is no further division into two age groups. The best German is Brigitte Burchardt at 6th place.
We wish all participants lots of fun and success!
