Sunday 15 April 2012

Czech tour, Prague and Franz Kafka!

If you are asking yourself question where to play during January, I have a simple answer. Czech Republic!
All my chess friends knows that I usually begin my season by playing one or two tournaments in Czech republic.
Tournaments are organised by AVE-KONTAKT group and are known like a Czech tour series. I already played eleven tournaments in Czech Republic but two tournaments have a special place in my calendar. The first one is Prague Open usually played in the first half of January, and second one is tournament in Marienbad (which is more like a chess festival, because there are many groups). Marienbad (or Mariánské Lázně) is small town with big chess history. You can found many reference games from the 1930s which are played in Marienbad.I can recommend you to read very good article about place and tournament written by my friend Jan Lundin and published on great blogg Inte bara schack by chess journalist Lars Grahn.
 This year I didn´t played in Prague ( I shared a first place year before, but that took to much energy and I didn´t manage to avoid last place in Marienbad for first time in my life) and tried to focus on GM tournament in Marienbad. Few days before tournament start I received mail from organisers that they claim I can´t play in the GM group because my rating is not active. I quickly explained that my federation didn´t payed some fees to FIDE (which them still didn´t payed), and showed them letter from FIDE office in Moskow where officer explained that I still can  play. Besides from that, everything else went smooth. I shared room with my friend from Swedish club which We both played for , Eksjö Aneby Alliansen. I have to admit that I was very disappointed with my result in tournament (4/9 with expected score 4,5/9) mostly because I missed many chances while my opponents took everything that they could. It is very rare example when everything went against me, but it has to be some logical explanation. I´ll try to find out by analysing games more deeply (yes, I didn´t analysed them all, as I said, I am lazy by nature). 
My room-mate Christopher Krantz shared 6th place in Open tournament but he was also a bit disappointed (mostly because he failed to crack his opponents when their level of resistant was high). We stayed in Prague two days before and two days after the tournament in Marienbad. I was very surprised when Cristopher said that he don´t know who was Frantz Kafka. He even claimed that 90% swedes under age of 30 probably never heard about him. I had very hard to believe that, but maybe he has right (you can comment on issue).


 I´ll do a list about advantages and disadvantages of these two tournaments. First, good things:
  • Czech republic is still very cheap compared to Sweden
  • There are conditions for IM´s and GM´s in open tournament in Prague
  • There are some conditions for IM´s in IM group and GM´s in GM group in Marienbad
  • Prague is one of the best cities that I visited and has the best public transport that I tried
  • Condition in tournaments are very good (playing venue and hotels)
  • Very good for norm aspiration players, and juniors
  • Very good food and excellent beer 
, and some negative things:
  • Prices are very low
  • Accommodation trough organizers in Prague open is much more expensive than common hotel prices
That is all for now, and in the next post I´ll show some games from Czech Republic.

1 comment:

  1. If Christopher Krantz lived at the same time as the great surrealist Franz Kafka, a novel of its own would have been dedicated to him...

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