The Cup takes place in Novi Sad, Serbia, from 5-13 November. This is the official site and you can see the participating teams here.

Last year the Cup was held in my native Skopje and it was Cheddleton’s first outing in Europe. The result for the team was very promising. We were in contention for a Top 10 finish, but we narrowly lost our last two matches. I always say that it is better to be in contention and fail than not to be in contention at all! The tournament also marked my return to the competition, my first after 2008, and it was a fantastic come-back with 5.5/7 and the best overall score on Board 4 in the whole tournament!

This year we are stronger and even more motivated. You can see our line-up with the captain proudly leading the field! In order to promote and help our campaign, Fiona, our strongest player GM David Howell and a couple of other players (IM Vlad Hamitevici and the (in)famous Ginger GM (Simon Williams)) decided to make it massive – a full 12-hour live stream! To quote Fiona “the stream will consist of both a lot of chess and a lot of nonsense, so make sure you subscribe to my channel now and tune in later for a game or some banter!” You can subscribe to “Fionchetta” and follow the show for as long as you can stand good (and not always English) humour, some chess and great fun! The show starts at 3PM CET today, so I hope this post reaches you in time.

It is always a great pleasure to spend time with the guys (and the lady) and I hope we manage to improve on our result from last year. It should be fantastic!