Nations Cup in Itlay

[Ingo_Zachos]

The FID has announced that they host a team event for national teams in Fossano, South of Torino on July 23 th to July 26 th, 2oo9 in "dama inglese", that is straight Checkers.

The program can be downloaded in several languages on the FID site:

http://www.fid.it

I wonder which nations will attend?
Germany has already confirmed their participation.

Greetinx from rainy Dortmund, Germany

Ingo Zachos

[Ingo_Zachos]

The event can be traced live on the FID website:

http://www.fid.it

Four nations will play: Italy, Germany, Czech Republic and India (!).
There will be an opening ceremony on Thursday and we will play on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Germany will be represented by Igor Martynov, Ingo Zachos, Thomas Wien and youngster Thomas Juergens.
We hope to give a though fight in our debut in a team competition, and that the event may have a rich future and a much higher number of nations next time.


Greetinx from cloudy Germany,

Ingo Zachos

[Alex_Moiseyev]

Here is an article which Igor Martinov (Germany) emailed to me and asked to post on this forum.

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The first international tournament “Nation Cup”in English checkers took place in a small town of Fossano near Turin in Italy July 23 – 26, 2009. Because of information about this competition arrived too late and the terms were not preliminary coordinated with other National Draught Federations, only three teams from Germany, Czech Republic and Italy had chance to participate in event. It was also a great disappointed moment for organizers of tournament that the Indian team, as it was preliminary declared in advance, did not come.

The participants stayed and played in hotel “Dama” and the owners of hotel, Pagliano family members, are the great fans of Italian draughts. Everything In hotel reminded about draughts - everywhere on floor, walls and tables are inlaid the checkers boards.

It was an interesting system of carrying out the tournament. Four persons of every team played circularly against all participants from other countries one(!) game with 3-move ballot. Simultaneously was lost only one debut for everybody(!). So two members of each team got one colour and two the other. To exclude the possibility of looking to the other games it was possible to rise up only after 12 moves.

AM. Playing only one game from 3 moves openings is indeed a new word in checkers history But this maybe explainable with limited and tie round time, number of days etc

As a result of the competition, it was a confident victory of Italian team which won both matches: against Cermany – 24:8 and Czechia – 21:11. The second place took the Czech Republic, they took over Germany – 24:8. In individual offset the best result was achieved by Italian Sergio Scarpetta who brought his team 14 points (6 victories, 2 draws). Accurate refereeing was spent by Michele Barghetti.

Igor Martynov / Germany

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My hot congratulations to organisers, referee and participants for adding more event on our Anglo-American Draughts map. I really hope this first and very successful attempt will not be last and have a bright future. Eventually it may become a permanent event, World Cup, and be added to WCDF calendar.

Respectfully,

Alex Moiseyev

[Ingo_Zachos]

I can also just say that the Nations Cup in Fossano was GREAT, though the German team lacked cross board practise (last game I played was in Beijing) and so we lost a few endings with a piece ahead and winning positons on blunders.
(Though in the most surprising game a certain Italian Grandmaster was so shocked by the mistake my German team mate made that he simply forgot to move and lost on time in a complety winning position)
Especially the Italians proved to be quick calculators, and Sergio Scarpetta, the Italian Champion in "Dama inglese" was simply a class of his own.
I hope he can make it to the QT this year, and he would be among then favorites.

The idea of playing one ballot with one side only is simple but brilliant, as we play as TEAM and if one plays that opening with white and the other one with black, then it is balanced over all as well.
But, as I discussed with Gianfranco Borghetti, the chief arbiter (father of the reknown Michele Borghetti), it might be even better to play just one side of a ballot, but all play the same opening in each round in an indivdual tournament, as this reduces luck to a minimum in contrast to the fact, that players may get openings of different scope if the openings were balloted to each single pair of players and not to all players at once.
But, to have equal chances, they don't play all 156 openings, but just 134 they consider as having not an advatage that is too big for one side.
To me their system seemed much more sophisticated and logical then the system we played in Beijing.

The italian organisation was extremly good. All games were directly transmitted into the internet and the referee was an expierienced arbiter, who could answer all questions with great knowledge, despite of his limited English. The only cause of confusion were language problems, but in an international event that was to be expected.

Fossano is a small town in nothern Italy, one hour by train away from the sea and one hour from the Alpes, just south of Torino, but very quietly and friendly.
On all three days we had TV teams and when Igor Martynov went to Savona on Monday he was even recognized as a German player on the beach!
The coverage included the news sections on nationwide TV channels.

The hotel "Dama" is a must for every checker fan in Europe.
You must literally walk over a checkerboard in each room and in the lobby there are boards and magazines and pieces and trophies. Among them now the 1st place in the Nations Cup for Checkers.

I will do everything I can to support a 2nd Nations Cup, as the idea is great and all players, Italians, Czechs and Germans expressed their wish to play again next year.

We had a wonderful medal ceremony in the town hall and the italian hostipality was simply unparalleled to any event in which I played, in chess or checkers.

You can see a lot of pictures at Tomas Novotny's FTP-Server:

http://www.fossano.tomas-novotny.eu/

and I promise that there will be much more in the next days.

For the 2nd edition I just wish that apart from the central European countries others will also sent their teams next time.
I will promise that the Germans will do better, but I think the italian team would win, even if Britain, Ireland,Turkmenistan, Barbados or the USA would sent their best teams, though by a smaller margin.

The challenge is up to you to prove me wrong.

Greetinx from cloudy Germany,

Ingo Zachos

P.S: The idea to sanction it as a World Cup for teams is excellent. The times when only two nations met in an "international" match are definately over now.