Invitation and information

The games are played at blitz speed (five minutes, no increment). The tournament is divided into eight qualifiers, one candidates' tournament and one final. All qualifiers, the candidates and the final will be played on the playchess.com server.

Every player with the right to start for a national federation in Europe has the right to play in the qualifiers. The best players in the qualifier move on to the candidates' tournament. In addition to that, some more players have the right to play directly in the candidates:

• Every grandmaster (man/woman);
• Every player with a FIDE Elo of 2500 or better – as per July 31, 2003;
• Every reigning World or European Champion, male or female, no matter of what age;
• Two players per European federation, nominated by their federation.

In the final, the sixteen best players of the candidates will meet 16 players nominated by ECU and ChessBase. This final will be played for a prize fund of € 6,000.00.

Progress

The first preliminary was the 62nd Chess Today Cup played on the server. Exactly 250 players, mainly from Europe, were battling out five subscriptions to Chess Today and up to 14 spots in the candidates tournament, which will be played on the 8th of November.

After the the dust had settled in a two-hours intense blitz tournament the young German FM Christoph Wisniewski was the winner. He won his first seven games and settled for two draws in the final rounds, just enough to claim victory with a margin of 1.5 Bucholz points – fortune favours the brave. He will receive Chess Today for three month, has a place in the candidates tournament and in the Champion's Challenge, a weekly entry-free tournament on the server with a prize of appr. € 200,00 for the winner.

The runner-up was Anand Ramanan, who is representing the USA. He was able to win eight of his nine games, just losing to Christoph. He will receive Chess Today for two month and has a place in the Champions's Challenge. With 7.5/9 George Xie, representing Australia, came in as third, winning one month of Chess Today. As the last two players were non-European, they can’t play in the European Internet Championship.

In order to take one of the remining spots for the candidate tournament seven points from nine games were required. The best player with 6.5/9 came in as number 15 and was just one place short. Here young players are dominating the scene, most probably playing on a screen is more common for young players. However, the German blitz chess legend Karl-Heinz Podzielny, who is already more than 40 years old, made the norm.

Finally, two more subscriptions of Chess Today have been won as rating prizes. The best players with an rating below 2100 (server rating) Robin Wuenderlich and the best player with an rating below 1700, Svetlana Budolov, won one month Chess Today each.

The next preliminaries will be on Friday, Saturday and Monday. Players who qualified in the qualifiers should please fill out the registration form for the European Internet Championship.

Martin Fischer
Tournament Director

• Full information

• In order to participate in this Internet tournament you can use Fritz 8 or any Fritz-compatible program (Shredder, Junior, Tiger, Hiarcs), or you can download a free trial client here.