West London Chess Club

If you wish to combine your holiday and chess activity then Velden is the right place for you. In fact the holiday part was so right for me, that I decided not to play in the tournament but follow my husband’s games and prepare a pictorial report for you.

A little about geographical orientation of Velden: The Carinthian town of Velden has 2000 inhabitants and 7000 within its suburbs. Carinthia (German: Kärnten) is one of Austria’s 9 provinces and its capital is Klagenfurt. It is a southern province and is chiefly famous for its mountains and lakes. The Karawanken and Carnian Alps making up the border between Italy and Slovenia.

The Karawanken: south-east border with Slovenia

Carnian Alps: south-west border with Italy

Carinthia’s next important town is Villach and of course Pörtschach for its celebrity guests.

Apparently, Princess Diana and The Iron Lady (Margaret Thatcher) stayed at this hotel, which is in Pörtschach and 15 minutes away by a ferry from Velden.

You may be pleased to know that you can take as many ferry trips as you like and go to the lakeside for a swim free of charge with your Carinthia card providing you stay for three or more nights at any hotel, pension or guest house in a Carinthian town.

This picture was zoomed by 72x and this one is…

…not zoomed at all and both pictures were taken from the same distance! Can you spot the ferry?

Velden’s chess history: Velden hosted two candidate matches in the past; in 1980 when Korchnoi beat Petrosyan and in 1983 when Smyslov beat Hübner in a tie-break by the spin of a roulette wheel at Casino Velden.

The venue of the chess festival

Extracts from my diary: The weather was not so promising when we arrived in Velden, but I knew that wherever I’d go the sunny whether should follow me (apart from London). While trying to find our lodgings we saw a huge crowd in the centre of the town, to be more precise in front of the Casino Velden. To our great surprise there was a sport’s car festival!

Morgan?

Lamborghini

Lambor-Genie? And Genies can surely fly!

Ferrari, I assume?

Ferrari, indeed!

There were many water fountain installations…

Like this one...

or this one...

…and some Italian tourists were trying to turn the marble ball over!

There was a café called Moro, in honour of Morozevich I believe! I thought it was quite a funny coincidence since all you could buy from there was ice-cream.

If you did not know already Moroz means frost in Russian.

A nice façade of a restaurant in Velden

Hotel Schloss Velden by Lake Wörthersee

Velden was full of social events; you name it, and even a Polizei Gala!

Reading out award winners' names

The back of the playing hall and the Polizei Gala poster is on the right.

Now let’s focus on Velden’s brief chess news!

The tournament was attended by 8 GMs, 1 WG, 10 IMs, 2 WIMs, 10 FMs and 1 WFM.

Austrian IM Markus Rager (ELO 2498) had 6.5 points out of 7 and was a potential winner but in round 8 Slovenian GM Dusko Povasovic (ELO 2567) and Austiran IM Georg Danner (ELO 2421) caught up with him and at the end and all three scored 7/9 and were the top 3.

I must say that I was disappointed not being able to take any picture of the winner Markus Rager as he drew his last 4 games so swiftly while others spent just about 5 minutes on their clock. And I didn’t even know what he looked like, so I could not track him down in the playing hall…

Final standings for top 16

192 players took part in the tournament

The playing hall was well air-conditioned and bright

2^nd place: Slovenian GM Dusko Povasovic

Polish GM Radoslaw Jedynak (ELO 2538) and next to him Hungarian GM Jozsef Horvath (ELO 2539)

WG Anya Corke (ELO 2154) from Hong-Kong shared women’s 1^st prize

The youngest competitor, Austrian 9-year-old Alexandra Kogler, was playing in group C

And now enjoy the rest of the pictures…

A view from a ferry trip

and another one

and another one

and another one: peninsula Maria-Wörth am Wörthersee

For 4 days I went to the lakeside and got suntanned pretty well as the temperature went up to +30C: No, that’s not me…

It really is a tasty water, but dog Ales already had enough of it. They were just posing for me…

… and they were too…

…the local residents were posing too…

The Moon is hanging over Velden, 30th of June.

The organisers told me that they were thinking of making this tournament annual but it would be either in June or in September, if it is in June then see you all there!

Official website of the tournament: http://www.velden-open.at

Pictorial report by Meri Grigoryan