A week ago (7-8th of May) I had a chance to participate in a very well organized event held in Katowice, 4th Polish-Hungarian Friendship Chess Tournament. I have played in Katowice previously only once and it was more than 4 years ago in Polish Academic Chess Championship and I wrote about it on my blog. As far as I remember that was the first time the organizer from Katowice tried to push chess tournaments in Poland to the next level that time and he did manage doing so. After 4 years I can only confirm the direction was very good and we have real chess festival in Poland now 🙂
There were around 600 participants(!) in one huge playing hall the International Conference Centre. There were many kids, I think more than 50% of the players were kids and organizers provided lots of activities for them. Top games were transmitted online and there was even live commentary which is still the domain of only high level tournaments around the world. On the first day I was even invited to the studio and I was talking with IM Daniel Sadzikowski about my game and my future project which is coming very soon.
You can watch it here, it’s 10 minutes long (starts at 6h26m24s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wWoYkIpSmk&feature=youtu.be&t=6h26m24s
After the first day I scored 3,5/5 unfortunately loosing 5th game to strong GM. I didn’t recover on the next day and finished with 6/9 which wasn’t that bad but certainly I tried for more. The tournament was won by my old good friend GM Kacper Piorun who made huge progress recently and is currently in top 100 players in the world.
Detailed results: http://chessarbiter.com/turnieje/2016/ti_1947/results.html?l=en&tb=10_
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