26th World Senior Chess Championship 2016, 50+ and 65+

 A record 31 teams from 10 federations met at the start. A large number of Czech teams took advantage of the opportunity to play with chess legends, and we can find fifteen of them on the starting list.

In the category over 50, ten teams play by round-robin system. The main favorites are the national teams of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, in which we can see a number of former Czechoslovak representatives - let's name the grandmasters Hracek, Haba, Stohl or Plachetka.

Results of the category 50+ can be found at Chess-Results.

The competition in the category 65+ is even busier. The team with the highest average rating of 2389 is the German Lasker Schachstiftung GK, which is represented by three grandmasters. The second highest ranked team is Lysa nad Labem-100 years, which, as the name of the team suggests, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the founding of chess in the city. Lysa included several players in its line-up who had fought for the club in the past; we can mention, for example, the grandmasters  Vlastimil Jansa or Eduard Meduna. Other teams also have strong players - GM Vaisser will play for France, GM Hort for Germany and GM Farago for Hungary.

Results of the category 65+ can be found at Chess-Results.

All games can be watched online with a 15 min delay, fans can then watch them on various servers: https://www.estcc2021.net/games/live-coverage/

Before the start of the first round, the participants observed a minute of silence in memory of the recently deceased GM Sveshnikov, whom many participants met at last year's World Senior Team Championship, which also took place in Prague.

Petr Pisk

Director of ESTCC 2021