Carlsson continues winning ways in Sweden!


	Carlsson continues winning ways in Sweden!


	Sweden's Pontus Carlsson is a young talented player, who at age 20, is only going to get better. Participating in the recent Sweden Team Championships (14-16 March 2003), his Sollentuna SK club won the exciting championship by the narrowest of margins. Carlsson remarks, "We should have won our match versus Limhamn but we spoiled a lot of good positions and only reached a tie 4-4. I played very bad and lost a better position. Our only hope before the last round were that Rockaden and Limhamn should play 4-4 at the same time we had to beat Lund with at least 5½-2½. It all worked out fine since we beat Lund with 8-0! and Rockade and Limhamn played 4-4 in a dramatic rapid play finish."


	Pontus Carlsson

The winning Sollentuna team fielded such strong players as Evgenij Agrest, Sergey Ivanov, Valerij Popov, Miroslav Markovic and Thomas Ernst. The Limhamn team had a powerful quartet in Ivan Sokolov, Jan Timman, Jonny Hector, and Ferdinand Hellers. Rockaden had Jaan Ehlvest, Ulf Andersson, Jonas Barkhagen, and Mats Sjöberg. Pia Cramling also plays in the league as does Nick DeFirmian, Tom Wedberg and Tiger Hillarp Persson.

Swedish Team Championship (in Swedish)

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Carlsson wins Tusenmanna Rapids!

While Sweden is a rather small nation with only 14 GMs, the quality of play is exceedingly high. As Carlsson put it in an interview during last year's World Junior Championships, "We have 14 grandmasters and we are definitely good in our standard." Thus, the mathematics student has many opportunities to improve.

One such opportunity was the Tusenmanna Rapids Championship. This tournament was interesting in that two players share 30 minutes of time depending on the ratings… a handicap system. There are five groups: ratings of 2300 and above is group A; ratings of 2000 and above is group B; ratings of 1800 and above is group C; ratings of 1600 and above is group D; below 1600 is group E.

There were four mixed groups and the following players won their respective groups: Pontus Carlsson (5/6), Kezli Ong (6/6), Eric Lobron (5½/6), Peter Bjarnehag (5½/6). Carlsson won the final single round-robin tournament with 2½ points followed by Lobron with 2-2, Ong with 1-3 and Bjarnehad with only ½. Congratulations Pontus!!

Tusenmanna Rapids Final--2003


	Pontus Carlsson (3rd from left) with other Tusenmanna finalists and also the Presidents of both the Swedish and Stockholm Chess Federations.


	Posted by The Chess Drum: 15 April 2003