The most important chess tournament in Slovakia took place in Skalica for the fourth time!
The biggest and strongest international chess tournament in Slovakia, which has already gained recognition of
international chess federation, has finished its fourth year. The International Chess Federation
has ranked it among the 25 most important tournaments in Europe and among the TOP 50 in the world.
In addition to the four chess tournaments, participants and visitors of the tournament took part in the accompanying
activities: boat cruise on the Bata Canal, tennis tournament, ping-pong tournament, football, swimming,
golf. The event was broadcast via livestream with an audience of several thousand people. We visited
the sights of Skalica, Maria Theresa’s castle in Holíč, a trdelník factory, a local winemaker,
the Holíč brewery and other local attractions.
The winner of the main tournament was the young promising Slovak representative Filip Haring from Banská
Bystrica, who takes away his first Grand Master standard in addition to the reward of 1600 Euro.
He scored 7 points from 9 games as well as the second in the standings, the Slovak number one Jerguš Pecháč. The third
place went to Vlastimil Babula from Uherský Brod.
In the B tournament called Schaeffler cup Simona Bochníčková from
KŠN Bratislava defended her championship from last year in a very balanced tournament, where the first three got the same number of 7 points from 9
games. The second place went to Aksel Brasoy from Norway, the third to Jáchym Hrbek from Prague.
The prizes were presented together with the tournament director by the State Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and
Sport Ivan Husár.
The winner of the tournament in rapid chess was the Slovak representative Samir Sahidi, the winner of the tournament in the fastest
blitz chess Corageo Blitz was Aczel Gergely from Hungary.
“A total of 222 players from 16 countries played in four tournaments in Skalica, together with many of them came
family members and coaches,” said Milan Roman, tournament director and president of the Slovak Chess Federation
.
On Saturday a discussion and autograph session with Slovak participants of the Chess Olympiads took place,
where besides Jergus Pechac visited the first Slovak Grandmaster Ján Plachetka, Grandmaster Ľubomír
Ftáčnik and Grandmaster Igor Stohl.
“It is amazing to see that someone is doing such a spectacular event in Slovakia”, praised the tournament grandmaster
Lubomir Ftáčnik.
“This chess event is certainly among the TOP3 in Europe”, added Ján Plachetka, an experienced grandmaster and participant of
hundreds of tournaments all over the world.
The Skalica Chess Festival was supported by ENERGY Group, Kvarteto o.z., Trnava Self-Administrative Region,
SCHAEFFLER Skalica, Protherm production, CORAGEO, O2 Bussines Services, Vaillant Group
Slovakia s.r.o, Cukranka, Regional Chess Association Trnava, SPP Foundation and SKAND Skalica.