At the moment, in Pavilion 3 of the International Plovdiv Fair, takes place the European chess championship for teams. The championship started last Saturday, Oct.11th, and will close on Oct.20th. Participants are 161 altogether ? 117 women and 44 men. This championship is expected to be the most powerful one in the long history of chess contests, due to the fact that six of the Top Ten in the Rating List of the FIDE (World Chess Federation) are in Plovdiv, including the world champion Ruslan Ponomaryov (Ukraine) - Evgenij Bareev, Pyotr Svidler and Alexander Grishchuk (Russia), Alexey Shirov (Spain), Victor Korchnoy (Switzerland).
The official opening of the championship was on Friday, Oct.10th, at 7.30 pm, at the stage of the Ancient Theatre by a concert of the virtuoso piper Teodossy Spassov. On Saturday, the chess-clocks started ticking at the first from the altogether nine rounds of the championship. The day off is set for Thursday, Oct.16th.
Bulgaria will take part in the championship with two male and two female teams, but for the final position the results of only one team will count. Our best female chess-player, Antoaneta Stefanova, is part of the A team, along with Margarita Voyska and Emilia Dzhingarova (both members of the Locomotive Plovdiv sports club). One of our male players, the A team member Ivan Cheparinov, from Assenovgrad, finished even with the white against the ex world champion Alexander Halifman from Russia in the first round of the championship.