European Individual Chess Championship

View of the tournament hall from the Men's (Zegrze) 2005 event

The European Individual Chess Championship is a chess tournament organized by the European Chess Union. It was established in 2000 and has since then taken place on a yearly basis. Apart from determining the European Champion, another object of this tournament is to determine a number of players who qualify for the FIDE world cup.

European Championship 1942

A tournament purporting to be the first European Championship (Europameisterschaft) was held in Munich, 14-26 September 1942, organised by Ehrhardt Post, the Chief Executive of Nazi Grossdeutscher Schachbund. But given that players from Germany's enemies (Soviet Union, Great Britain and Poland) were unable to participate (because of World War II), and Jewish players barred (because of Nazi policy), this tournament was simply a manifestation of Nazi propaganda and has never received any form of official recognition as a championship.

Mode of play

The tournament is held separately for men and women as a Swiss system tournament, with a varying number of rounds. The only exception was the first Women's Championship tournament in 2000, which was held as a knock-out-tournament. As with all chess competitions, the "men's" section is in fact an open tournament in which female players may participate, but not vice versa. In 2002, Judit Polgár narrowly missed the bronze medal in the men's competition by losing a play-off match against Zurab Azmaiparashvili. In 2011, Polgar won the bronze medal in the men's competition at Aix-les-Bains, France.

Apart from the first edition in 2000, where in case of a tie the Buchholz-Rating was used as a tie-breaker, rapid-play play-off matches were used to determine the medal winners as well as the world championship qualifiers.

Controversy

A number of recurrent issues have been marring the event from the very beginning:

• At most venues, participants and accompanying persons were obliged to accommodate at the "official hotel", appointed by the local organizers. The room rates, however, would be significantly higher than for other hotel guests. This in fact triggered the founding of the ACP. Also the standard of the hotels as well as of the food has been a focus of complaints by players and journalists.
• As the European Championships are part of the FIDE World Championship cycle, starting with the 2001 edition, the new, faster FIDE time control was used. This led to many complaints by the participants about increased stress, incessant time trouble and a steep deterioration of the quality of the games.
• A more indirect problem is the uncertainty whether a player's qualification for the World Championship will be of any value at all due to the inconsistent staging of the World Championship Tournaments since the change of the tournament format in 1999. For example, the 2002 European Championships provided five qualifying spots for the 2003 World Championship which in fact never took place.

Overview of results (Men)

Overview of results (Women)

Read more:

• EU Individual Open Chess Championship
• European Senior Chess Championship
• European Junior Chess Championship
• European Youth Chess Championship
• European Team Chess Championship