German club Deizisau won the 1st ever European Online Chess Club Cup

16-year-old Vincent Keymer posted a 2812 performance as German club Deizisau won the 1st ever European Online Chess Club Cup ahead of Clichy from France and Mednyi Vsadnik from Russia. Keymer’s colleague Georg Meier posted an even better 2896 performance, though it didn’t count towards board prizes as he didn’t play the required 7 games. Jan-Krzysztof Duda’s 6/8, a 2890 performance, was officially the best result, but his club Poland Hussars just missed out on medals in 4th place.

When favorites and international all-stars Baden-Baden were knocked out of the European Club Cup in the playoffs, few could have predicted that their all-German partner team Deizisau would win the whole event! They began the 10-team final as only the 7th seeds and were one of only 3 teams that never scored more than 2.5 points in a match… but Deizisau did that to win no less than 6 matches, lost just one, and finished a point clear at the top.

Deizisau showed incredibly consistency, with their one loss, to Novy Bor, also by the narrowest of margins. In such a tough event it’s never going to be easy, and Andreas Heimann was thrown in at the deep end, suffering defeats to David Navara and Andrey Esipenko in the four games he played, all with the black pieces. Matthias Bluebaum faced fierce competition on top board and lost four of his last five games, but the win over Shakhriyar Mamedyarov the round before that earned his team a win.

All in all, the 1st Online European Club Cup seems to have been a success, even if we all hope for a return to over-the-board international team events in the not too distant future.

See also:

• Official website
• All the games on chess24: Groups A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I | Playoffs: A, B, C | Final
• Favourites Baden-Baden crash out of Euro Club Cup