For us, the year 2018 is extremely successful.

The European Chess Academy organized numerous events in 2018, supported numerous young chess players and firmly established itself in the domestic and international chess environment as a distinguished and respected partner.

Among the tournaments, we should mention in particular two: the World Senior Championship (November, Bled) and the first memorial of the great Slovenian grandmaster Albin Planincn (November 24, Bled), which we are particularly proud of. In May, we organized an attractive duel between Maribor Alexander Beljavsky and Evgeny Svešnikov in Maribor.

We also supported the efforts of others: we were the main sponsor of the 20th Pirce Memorial in Maribor (July-August), the main sponsor of the Styrian Cadet League (ten tournaments in 2018, over 1,000 participants!) and the main sponsor of the memorial tournament in memory of the famous Maribor chess worker Maksimilijan Dular. The European Chess Academy was the sponsor of the women's team ŽŠK Maribor, who took part in the European Team Championship and occupied an excellent ninth place (October, Greece).

With all this, we also took great care of the chess among young people. As part of the project of the School of the future champions, we supported several promising Slovenian chess players: naional champions Teja Vidic and Boris Markoja, promising Jan Marn and Jakob Bratkovič, but we did not forget about the deprivileged because we supported Jaka Juvana. All of our young clients have made great progress, they have achieved many successes, titles, international bale, have improved their rating and we are very proud of them.

With the support of youth projects, we were given some spectacles. Let us mention the simultan played by the nobleman Aleksej Širov against the Cadet Slovenian team (Maribor, May) and the large international educational camp (Maribor, July).

Let me, on this occasion, thank all our partners, especially sponsors, without the assistance of which many of our projects would not be possible. First and foremost, we would like to thank our expert manager for international events, Mr. Evgeny Ušakov, who through his connections and selfless help helps us with enormous and priceless help. A similar thank goes to the member of the Council of our Institute, Mr Lev Popel, who - although not himself is a chess player - found his challenge in chess and our projects. Beside him, Mr. Nebojša Baralić from Serbia, who, although he lives in Serbia, carries out one thousand jobs for the Academy, ranging from managing websites to leading the most important tournaments.

Georg Mohr, Director of the Academy and Adrijan Mihaljcisin, Director of the Academy