16th ECSC Bratislava, Slovakia,
02.06.2023-04.06.2023
Results
European championships are returning to their traditional annual rhythm. We are happy that Bratislava was able to welcome the top European chess solvers. Many thanks to the ECSC director Marko Klasinc and the OPEN director Marián Križovenský. Bohumil Moravčík selected the problems for the OPEN, the selection of ECSC problems was made by Marko Klasinc. A lot of credit for the smooth running of the championship goes to Axel Steinbrink, who helped the directors in both tournaments. Ján Golha and Emil Klemanič assisted the directors also.
The Baltic Combined tournament and Blind Solving were prepared and judged by Oto Mihalčo and Ľubomír Širáň. There were two composing tournaments arranged on the occasion of the ECSC. The director of the helpmates tournament was Michal Dragoun and the judge was Juraj Lörinc. The second one was the Jubilee tournament for 90th birthday of the WFCC Honorary President Bedrich Formánek. The tournament was judged by Bedrich personally, the director was Ladislav Packa.
Slovak Organisation for Chess Composition was the main organizer of the 16th European Chess Solving Championship, with Marek Kolčák, Marián Križovenský, Tomáš Peitl, Ľubomír Širáň and Milan Šumný as the members of the ECSC organizing committee. We would like to thank the Slovak Chess Federation for their support, especially the SCF President Milan Roman who took part in the Opening ceremony, and the SCF Vice-President Štefan Blaho who shared the honor of awarding the medals during the Closing ceremony with the WFCC President Marjan Kovačević.
– Marek Kolčák, member of the 16th ECSC organizing committee
TEAM RESULTS | INDIVIDUAL RESULTS | JUNIOR RESULTS | SENIOR RESULTS | WOMAN RESULTS
NORMS | PROBLEMS | SOLUTIONS | Problems’ difficulty
14 teams and 75 individuals (2 unofficial without rating calculations) from 18 countries participated in the 16th ECSC.
The three top teams: Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia
The three top individuals: Kacper Piorun (Poland), Piotr Murdzia (Poland), Eddy Van Beers (Belgium)
Slovakia, 3rd place 
Lithuania, 2nd place 
Poland, 1st place
Winners by category:
Juniors: Kevinas Kuznecovas (Lithuania), Ilija Serafimović (Serbia), Mihnea Costachi (Romania)
Seniors: Jonathan Mestel (Great Britain), Jorma Paavilainen (Finland), Marjan Kovačević (Serbia)
Women: Kamila Hryshchenko (Great Britain), Denisa-Andreea Bucur (Romania), Daria Dvoeglazova (Israel)
Junior winners 
Senior winners 
Woman winners
At the request of the organizers, I took over the ECSC. The last tournament I judged was WCSC in 2002 in Portorož, so this one was a big challenge. I have installed the latest version of Solving Tournaments Manager STM, many thanks to author Misha Mladenović for his advices. The program is fantastic, it contains all possible situations that can occur in competitions. The best option for the judge is that the program includes a database of problems, which Luc Palmans has been building for several years and contains all tournaments since 1977. Each newly entered problem is automatically compared with problems from the database and warns if the problem has ever been used. Unfortunately, but at the same time luckily, the program eliminated a large number of excellent problems for solving. Several of them were already used in two tournaments, some even in three. The program is a must for all tournament directors. In the end, I decided on a selection of not too difficult, but enjoyable problems. Nevertheless, no solver reached the maximum number of points.
I was happy that Axel Steinbrink offered to be an assistant, without him it would be difficult to run the championship. Thank you, Axel, for all your help. There were no serious protests against the results. Congratulations to all the winners!
– Marko Klasinc, director of the ECSC 2023
Tournaments in the frames of 16.ECSC event
ECSC Open Solving 2023 | 12th tournament of World Solving Cup 2022/2023:
RESULTS | Problems | Solutions
Marián Križovenský (director of the Open)
BALTIC COMBINED – RESULTS | Problems | Problems with names and solutions
BLIND SOLVING – RESULTS
Problems (notation only): no.1 – no.2 – no.3 – no.4 – no.5 – no.6 – no.7 – no.8 – no.9 – no.10
Solutions, diagrams, authors: no.1 – no.2 – no.3 – no.4 – no.5 – no.6 – no.7 – no.8 – no.9 – no.10
Posts published during ECSC 2023 with photo galleries:
Preliminary results of the OPEN ECSC2023
Preliminary Results ECSC 2023, R1-3
Preliminary Results ECSC 2023, R4-6