Poland-ETCC

     The European Team Championship will start in about a week in Warsaw.
     I like so much travelling around the World and playing chess tournaments! Can't wait for the Europeans to start!
     Our team is 10th out of 31 in the starting rating list.

1		Ukraine	2498
2		Russia	2491
3		Georgia	2491
4		Poland	2410
5		Germany	2390
6		Armenia	2386
7		France	2372
8		Hungary	2368
9		Spain	2367
10		Romania	2358

     As I said in so many posts- playing for a team is much more enjoyable for me than playing individual tournaments. It may be occured, but I feel less pressure when playing for a team and I also like this supporting spirit- in an individual championship, no matter if you are friends with someone or not- first of all- you are opponents and no one sincerely wants you to win- maybe that's the biggest difference- the real support and positive thoughts you get from your teammates in a team event.

      Our team has the same composition as in the last championships we had played:

1	IM	Foisor Cristina-Adela	2347	ROU	0.0
2	WGM	Bulmaga Irina	2399	ROU	0.0
3	WGM	L'ami Alina	2361	ROU	0.0
4	WGM	Cosma Elena-Luminita	2326	ROU	0.0
5	WGM	Voicu-Jagodzinsky Carmen	2275	ROU	0.0

Alina L'ami and Carmen Voicu-Jagodzinsky

Cristina Foisor, Luminita Cosma, Carmen Voicu-Jagodzinsky and me

Our captain- Gergely Szabo with Carmen and Alina

     Here is the official site of the event: http://etcc2013.com/ where you can follow the live games and the photo reports.

     We will stay in the center of Warsaw and I simply can't wait to explore it! I am really excited about everything :))) I will also celebrate my 20th birthday there! What can be better than that- I always prefer to celebrate it at tournaments than at home, because I have more friends in the "Chess World" than in the real one :P

Will keep you posted! 

xoxo from Chisinau ;)

20 years to go

     I am again in Romania and it feels... almost right.
     I've been inactive for quite a bit- this past month wasn't easy at all and the reason is the World Junior Championship- the last one for me.
      I took the 5th place, though I was leading the tournament for some rounds. One may think that it was just another tournament- one of the so many others I've played- but it was a special tournament for me- one where many ideas, hopes and tries to prove myself met. There's no point of hidding my disappointment- anyone who understands a professional chess player can see it easily- I did my best at the time and though there might be some things I'd change now- I couldn't have done more.
     An important period of my life has just ended- 20 years have passed in no time at all and it's time for asking myself what's next. What do I want to do now? What is the plan? I am still not sure about the answers and a serious thinking is ahead. There are no hopes, no plans and no ideas, no things I want and nothing I want to try- but there will be... sooner or later. It depends only on me. In fact, who can know better than myself which direction is the right one for me?
     They say that the biggest mistake in chess is to have no plan- "It's better to have a bad plan than no plan at all." The only thing is that we're not talking only about chess here.
     I have about 2 and a half weeks of finding "the plan", of doing all the necessary calculation and estimating the final position after all the possible variations.
     Looking in retrospective- these 20 years were good. God, I'd be a liar if I'd say I'm not happy of the way I lived- it's just that so many "what if" attack me... though I guess there's nothing strange or out of common in this.
      What to say more?

      "There are twnety years to go
       And twenty ways to know..."




xoxo from Romania I guess ;)