by International Master Jovan Petronic

Well, I did not call, but decided to accept the invitation and come!! Virtually!! These days, one does not necessarily need a plane, a train or a car to reach any part of the World. There is another traveling tool, called – Internet!

Chess makes kids smarter, make no doubt about it! The brightest chess minds of Europe have gathered to challenge each others IQ’s, to challenge the preparations of many coaches and trainers. As of the moment I write this, The European Youth Championships U10-U18 in both competitions have moved into the 2^nd half, with round five finished.

Serbia and Montenegro is one of the European countries with the highest level of chess culture. There, almost everyone knows, and more importantly, values highly our beloved game of chess! Trust me, I was born there.

The website of the Chess Federation of Serbia and Montenegro Euro page has been specially designed to host the European Youth Championships 2005 and I would like to comment on some details I have noticed, that impressed me. I have been, of course, following happenings on all similar Championships held in the past years, and do not intend to make comparisons with these.

What impresses first is the light, yet professional design of all the pages. With just one click of the mouse, you are able to quickly view the results, download PGN, watch the selected games with an online viewer or see the current standings in all 10 competitions! There are no page and link labyrinths, in which one could get lost forever.

I was further impressed by the speed the results are updated! Only a while after the last game has finished, you are able to see al the results, standings and pairings for the next round! This is not common for many online tournaments and should be congratulated separately. Obviously, the arbiters team has decided to have their dinner only after all the job is done!

I downloaded all selected games available and have to give another positive review. There are currently twenty selected games published in each category, a total of two hundred per day - is a higher number of games usually covered at similar events! To the joy of the world of chess! Another plus is that the quality of the PGN games is very high, with the highest percentage of entered moves, I have seen for a while. The modern systems of electronically recording the games has shown significant disadvantages lately, and many games of youth tournaments, where this equipment was used, failed to produce complete moves of each game, thus corrupting the final database. This is not the case in Herceg-Novi. The older method of saving the games produces mostly exact data. Additionally, all important data is included in the PGN games: full names and surnames, FIDE elo, year and tournament title. Again, I must stress, this, normal approach to preserving our invaluable games of chess, is not yet an axiom for all. Ideally, all the games recorded would be the superb choice, but for this task, a lot of manpower, which often enough lacks, is needed.

The organizers choice of the pairing program - Swiss Perfect, generates high-quality cross-tables and challenges well the more recent other swiss pairing software being developed.

In the times of scarce chess bulletins, usually not provided in an adequate number, or even not at all, the Euro 2005 Youth Chess website offers a free download of each round’s online bulletin, in high enough quality PDF format!

The game viewer is fine, one can easily, even with a dialup connection, such as I currently have, view the games online, without downloading the files.

The photo section of each round is done very well, bringing all closer to the love ambient of the Euro Youth games. Quality of the photos is high, and they are chosen well, which is not a surprise to me, as the author is a well known young journalist from Beograd, FIDE master Josip Asik, with years of experience in this area (and a great camcorder!).

Serbia and Montenegro’s Chess Federation’s website is cleverly tracked by a free tracker (this information is made with free access to all, by the SCG Chess Federation’s webmaster Goran Tomic), which gives precise data on various topics, some of which I will present below.

I personally love and respect statistics, here are some that may raise eyebrows!

41.515 unique visitors in one week! The growing popularity of chess and Internet chess in Serbia & Montenegro, Europe and the World needs no further comments!