I could not find the Russians among the participants of the European championship that was played in March at the Romanian seaside resort Eforie Nord. I did see Russians who had left their country after the invasion of Ukraine and are now playing for another country.
Alexei Sarana, for example, who now plays for Serbia and was European champion in 2023. Or Daniil Yuffa, who in 2022 with 43 other prominent Russian players signed the open letter to Putin protesting the invasion. Yuffa now plays for Spain.
But I was used to seeing Russians living in Russia. In FIDE tournaments they are not allowed to play for Russia, but they are allowed to play under the FIDE flag.
They were not on the list of that European championship and it took me a while before I realized why that was. Russia no longer belongs to Europe, but to Asia. In 2023, the Russian Chess Federation broke away from the European Chess Union within FIDE and joined the Asian Union. The Russians therefore no longer participate in a European championship.
In the past, going from Europe to Asia would have been considered a big step down, but nowadays this is quite different.
I was reminded of a European championship that I had participated in myself, in 1988 in the Spanish city of Gijon. This was just rapid chess, which was then called “active chess” by FIDE. Garry Kasparov was angry about that term and wondered whether he should now be called the world champion of “passive chess.”
Anatoly Karpov won that tournament in Gijon. I had played well; I think I came seventh or eighth. After the tournament I sat on the bus to Madrid airport next to the Russian chess journalist Alexander Roshal, who was often an attendant to Karpov. Sometimes an armed attendant, if I may believe my sources.
Because I sometimes acted a bit provocatively in those old times, I told Roshal that I considered myself the champion of Europe, because all the players who had finished ahead of me came from the Soviet Union, and that was Asia. So Karpov had become the champion of Asia, I of Europe.
Roshal had a good answer: “If you think that, you should die quickly, then you will still be the champion of Europe on your deathbed.” Then the Georgian world champion Maya Chiburdanidze came along and handed out cookies to the passengers on the bus, and everything was fine again. In retrospect, I was a prophet when I included the Russians in Asia in 1988, because in 2023 they would do it themselves.
I was looking for the Russians in the European championship mainly because I wanted to see who the competitors were for Jorden van Foreest. He was the only Dutch participant and in rating he was number three, so Dutch fans could expect something.
He finished 14th, which was slightly disappointing, but at least he qualified for the World Cup that will be played in November in the Indian capital New Delhi.
The German Matthias Bluebaum won the tournament, which made him the only player who has become European champion twice.
Baadur Jobava, Jorden’s opponent in the game in the viewer, is a temperamental chess player, both on the board and off. He is known for his original opening play, but also as someone who was suspended for a while on the chess.com platform for comments about “Chinese motherfuckers.”
There is a video of a press conference after a game against Anish Giri in Tashkent in 2014, in which Jobava angrily says: “Don’t smile like an idiot. I’m not the guy who you can ironic.”
Giri had smiled when Jobava had maintained that he had a dangerous attack during their game and I think that smile was well justified.
The fluctuating game between him and Van Foreest in this European championship could have been won by either side, so the draw was a satisfactory outcome.
Click here to view Van Foreest-Jobava, Eforie Nord 2025.