Usually when every year ends everybody makes some post with the best moments of the last year. So I decide it to post my most favourites shots of 2011.

The most favourite male portrait is Nikolaidis Ioannis‘ portrait

And the most favourite female portrait is Valentina Golubenko’s portrait

Michael Adams won the Golden medal in the first board in European Team Chess Championship. Maybe England didn’t succeed alot but he managed to have the second greater performance of all the tournament and the best score in the 1st board.

In the last round Gustafsson Jan and Sargissian Gabriel played until the end to draw their game. When all other games had finished their position was a draw. But Sargissian Gabriel couldn’t agree to a draw. If he drew, Armenia maybe was losing the bronze medal and surely the silver medal.  So he fought until the end. I don’t know if he made some mistakes in the endgame that made him to draw but finally was a little bit upset because of this and didn’t want to stand next to Jan Gustafsson when medals for boards were awarded. The official didn’t understand that so he tried to take them closer and it was a little bit funny that Jan Gustafsson that is really tall had no problem but Gabriel Sargissian got more upset about this…

Germany won the trophy of European Team chess championship, and it was a big surprise for most of us. Germany was an outsider as was and Greece in Euro 2004 (soccer). Arkadij Naiditsch, Georg Meier, Daniel Fridman, Jan Gustafsson, and Rainer Buhmann took proudly their golden medals and trophy. 

In women section, european cup took it Russian team. Nadezhda Kosintseva, Tatiana Kosintseva, Valentina Gunina, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Natalia Pogonina and Yuri Dokhian as captain. On the photo is one of the rare times that the former trainer of Kasparov Yuri Dokhian is smiling. 

Greek chess team in European chess team championship had some very good moments, winning England but finally finished at 20th position. On this photo we see that before the games Greek national team trainer, Vasilis Kotronias encourages players before the game. The smiles on their faces show that at least they enjoyed it.

Teimour Radjabov on the first board of Azerbaijan in European Team Chess club maybe didn’t made a great tournament but he gave a great victory to his team by winning Peter Svidler and this way the finally took silver medal.

In the last game of  European team club cup women section Russia easily had won Austria but Nadezhda Kosintseva played until the end to draw. She was fighting until the end but no different result.

The Grand master Natalia Pogonina won Golden Medal in Europeant team championship with the russian team and also the golden medal for being the 5th player in Russian Federation women team. It was first time I met her in a tournament but I know her because of her website and her twitter. In the last game I managed to take a picture of her making her a move against WFM Novkovic Julia. I hope you like this photo too.