Welcome again to the forty fifth Chess Olympiad showcase — the place we provide you with a sneak peek into the international locations taking part within the occasion, their chess historical past, and different bits the chess fanatic in you’d like to know!
This time, we take you to the snowy landscapes and white-capped mountains of the Nordic international locations.
Within the international locations of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, intense bodily sports activities like cross-country snowboarding, alpine snowboarding, velocity skating, and soccer are the preferred.
However Nordic international locations are additionally residence to many thoughts warriors.
Born in Latvia in 1886, Aron Nimzowitsch went to Copenhagen, Denmark in 1922 and stayed there for the remainder of his life.
In Copenhagen, Nimzowitsch reached his peak as a participant, with historic ranking lists rating him at #3 on the planet between 1927 and 1931.
He additionally received the Nordic championship twice and scored first-place finishes in Copenhagen 1923, Dresden 1926, and Carlsbad 1929, simply to call a couple of.
After Nimzowitsch, the Nordic area produced many sturdy gamers. However it was Bent Larsen who captured the world’s consideration from the Nineteen Sixties to early Nineteen Seventies.
The 6-time Danish champion and 4-time World Championship candidate, Larsen was ranked as excessive as #4 on the planet. He was additionally one of many few non-Soviet GMs within the prime 10 — at a time when the USSR dominated the chess world.
Larsen carved out a status as a risk-taker and a harmful opponent for anybody. Even world champions needed to yield to his imaginative play and unorthodox concepts…which was the polar reverse of our subsequent Nordic chess hero, Ulf Andersson of Sweden.
Andersson reached a peak ranking of 2655 FIDE and a peak rating of world #4 — principally by enjoying rock-solid positional chess.
He constructed a reputation for profitable “unwinnable” endgames with little or no threat. Within the middlegame, his prophylactic expertise allowed him to identify and keep away from enemy techniques from a mile away. After which, he floor his opponents to mud.
In some ways, Andersson’s play type reminds us of the strongest and most well-known chess participant from the area — the sixteenth World Champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway.
Carlsen has reached the highest, and stays there by squeezing blood from a stone. It doesn’t matter if the engine says the place is 0.00. He’ll grind you down with superior positional play and endgame approach.
However Carlsen can be simply as able to enjoying à la Larsen or Nimzowitsch.
Many occasions, he has taken the highway much less traveled and performed obscure openings with nice success — even in World Chess Championship matches!
Carlsen could have relinquished the crown in 2023,however with a ranking of 2832, he’s not relinquishing the #1 spot any time quickly!
A couple of Chessable authors made it to the highest boards of the Nordic Olympiad groups, beginning with Magnus Carlsen.
Carlsen takes up the primary board of Norway, whereas fellow creator Johan-Sebastian Christiansen mans the second board. Christiansen’s Alapin Sicilian repertoire has confirmed its mettle towards 2700-grandmasters, and you may wager he has extra opening surprises underneath his sleeves.
Main Sweden’s open crew is Grandmaster Nils Grandelius, who introduced us The Magnus Queen’s Gambit and Lifetime Repertoires: Classical Slav.
Grandelius constructed a status for taking part in the identical dynamic traces in his repertoires. So tune in to his video games to see how his suggestions carry out on this match.
Listed here are the gamers for the open and girls’s groups of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.
Norway Open Group
Captain: Odin Blikra Vea
- GM Magnus Carlsen
- GM Johan-Sebastian Christiansen
- GM Aryan Tari
- GM Frode Olav Olsen Urkedal
- GM Elham Amar
Norway Ladies’s Group
Captain: Linus Johansson
- WGM Niina Koskela
- WIM Olga Dolgova
- WIM Viktorija Ni
- WIM Sheila Barth Stanford
- Monika Machlik
Sweden Open Group
Captain: Peter Bergstrom
- GM Nils Grandelius
- GM Erik Blomqvist
- IM Milton Pantzar
- IM Martin Lokander
- GM Tiger Hillarp Persson
Sweden Ladies’s Group
Captain: Juan Manuel Bellon Lopez
- GM Pia Cramling
- WIM Inna Agrest
- WFM Anna Cramling Bellon
- Margarita Zaritovskaja
- Lavinia Valcu
Denmark Open Group
Captain: Soren Bech Hansen
- GM Jonas Buhl Bjerre
- GM Mads Andersen
- GM Jesper Søndergaard Thybo
- IM Filip Boe Olsen
- FM Jens Albert Ramsdal
Denmark Ladies’s Group
Captain: Jacob Sylvan
- CM Sandra De Blecourt
- WFM Ellen Kakulidis
- WFM Esmat Susanne Guindy
- Shanne Hedegaard Jakobsen
- Sofie Bech Durrfeld
We couldn’t be extra proud to have Carlsen, Christiansen, and Grandelius in our roster of authors. However it’d be remiss to not acknowledge different Nordic authors on Chessable — lots of whom have performed within the Olympiad, too!
Let’s have a look:
Jon Ludvig Hammer
The three-time Norwegian champion sports activities a peak ranking of 2705 FIDE, which put him at #40 on the planet.
Adventurous openings mixed along with his common playstyle helped him beat world champions Vishy Anand and Magnus Carlsen — the latter in classical chess a minimum of 3 occasions!
His repertoire Hammer’s Nimzo-Indian builds in your slight lead in improvement… to create severe stress towards 1.d4. It brings collectively the very same traces he performs in tournaments, with over 15 years of enhancements.
Solveig Friberg
Friberg is an grownup improver and chess streamer from Norway, recognized to her followers as Rookie_redhead. She fell in love with chess as she adopted the 2021 World Chess Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi. Solely 3 years later, she’s raised her ranking to 1570 FIDE, and she or he solely retains climbing.
Taking inspiration from her newbie journey, and bringing her educating expertise into chess, Friberg’s Breaking 1000 offers your openings, middlegames, and endgames a lift. So you’ll be able to attain that 4-digit ranking quick, and acquire a stable basis for future success.
Peter Heine Nielsen
Nielsen’s peak ranking of 2700 FIDE and peak world rating of #37… his 5-time Danish championships… and his 60.1% win fee on the Olympiad are feats the vast majority of gamers can solely dream of.
However maybe he will likely be finest remembered because the most profitable coach on the world championship degree. He has received 9 consecutive matches for the crown — 4 with Vishy Anand from 2007 to 2012, then 5 with Magnus Carlsen from 2013 to 2021.
Who is aware of? Nielsen may discover one other protege and proceed his streak.
In the meanwhile, Nielsen has busied himself sharing his wealth of sensible information with Chessablers.
By programs like Methods of Positional Play and Chess Buildings: A Grandmaster’s Information, he reexamines outdated strategic ideas underneath the lens of contemporary chess, and exhibits you the way to efficiently apply them in your video games.
Lars Schandorff
Within the early 90s, Denmark solely had 2 grandmasters — Bent Larsen and Nielsen, who we simply met. So when Schandorff earned the GM title in 1996, he was overflowing with pleasure.
Since then, he’s received not less than 11 Danish, German, and Swedish crew championships. And key to his success in crew tournaments is his stable but bold openings.
His iron-clad setups stand agency towards the hardest opponents… whereas staying versatile sufficient to outplay everybody else.
In his first repertoire on Chessable, Schandorff exhibits you the way to get your sport on towards 1.d4, 1.c4, and 1.Nf3… in simply 5 common strikes.
Johan Hellsten
Hellsten is the 2006 Swedish chess champion, and one of many nation’s most profitable gamers in crew tournaments.
Hellsten not solely received gold and bronze medals within the 1997 and 2005 European Males’s Group Championship. He additionally holds a 67.4% win fee for all of the video games he’s performed within the occasion.
Amongst chess improvers, Hellsten is finest recognized for his Mastering Chess Technique collection.
It was dubbed as “rocketship for chess understanding” within the Chessable boards. Thanks, in no small half, to its exhaustive, piece-by-piece breakdown of master-level strategic play.
Can Kabadayi
Kabadayi’s chess journey is an inspiration, particularly for individuals who picked up the sport comparatively late. He discovered chess at age 17. However after solely 4 years of significant research, he achieved a ranking of 2153 FIDE.
Kabadayi additionally earned the Candidate Grasp title and have become a FIDE teacher shortly after.
His PhD in cognitive science helps him to maximise the effectiveness of his coaching classes…
And he’s blended his coaching strategies into his award-winning Chessable programs. All of which have obtained 5-star evaluate after 5-star evaluate, due to their emphasis on creating “bread and butter” chess expertise (i.e. calculation, exchanging, enjoying towards the items, and so forth.) to perfection.
The forty fifth Chess Olympiad is shaping to be an intense, must-follow match, with the mightiest Norsemen and girls using for Budapest, Hungary in September.
And whereas they put together for 2 weeks of cutthroat chess, our Nordic authors are treating us to large reductions of as much as 40%.
From Bundesliga-level opening repertoires, techniques and technique guides by essentially the most profitable coach, to endgame programs by the world champion – see all of them right here.