This Saturday, April 23, 2022, a solidarity match between teams from Norway and Ukraine was played. The competition is a joint initiative by the Good Knight Pub (Kristoffer Gressli), the Lviv Chess Federation (Oleksandr Prohorov), the Offerspill Chess Club (Jon Kristian Haar) and ChessTech (Stefan Löffler).

Magnus Carlsen led the Norwegian team (Aryan Tari, Johan-Sebastian Christiansen and Lars Oskar Hauge) that met in the Good Knight Pub in the centre of Oslo. Former world number two Vasyl Ivanchuk was at the helm of the Ukrainian squad (Kirill Shevchenko, Yuriy Kuzubov and Alexander Moiseenko). 

Esports Cup participant Anish Giri and his second Erwin L’Ami drew lots to decide the colours for the match. Every player played each player from the other side once for four rounds of rapid chess with 10 minutes each plus ten seconds per move. 

On paper match had seemed a close affair but the Ukrainian team came off with flying colors winning by a score of 11-5. Kirill Shevchenko and Yuriy Kuzubov became the main contributors to this victory, netting 3½/4 each.  

The match was streamed in English from the Good Knight pub on the channel of the Offerspill chess club. Viewers were invited to donate to the war relief in Ukraine via their smartphone (if in Norway) or via Twitch.  

Ukraine

Norway

The complete results can be found here. 

Offerspill stream (English): https://www.twitch.tv/offerspillsk

Ukrainian stream: https://www.twitch.tv/im_skliarov

YouTube stream: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaCKWG0hmPMgXxYYiUZoJ

YouTube stream (Ukrainian): https://youtu.be/NVwqw4-yD5Q

Enquiries: sl@chesstech.org, gressli@hotmail.com, prohorov@chessclub.lviv.ua