Annex Chess Club

The monthly Toronto Women's Chess Club at ACC, led by WGM Anna Burtasova, was featured in a Lichess blog post by , a member of the Lichess content team.

Thank you Rosie for the feature!

Toronto Women's Chess Club - Interview with WGM Anna Burtasova After the public Lichess meetup in Toronto in October 2025, I was invited to attend the Toronto Women's Chess Club which is held in the Annex Chess Club every second Monday of the month.

Thanks John for the wonderful photos as always, and congrats again to all the prize winners!

A full house last night with 34 teams in the GTCL Cup! Congratulations to Knightmares for winning the overall event and juniors for winning the U1800 division, as well as all of the other winners.

Thank you all for coming and happy holidays.

Thank you to the Greater Toronto Chess League for awarding ACC the bid for the 2025 Toronto Open as well as Black Diary Investments for sponsoring the event!

Congratulations to IM Anthony Atanasov for a superb performance, scoring 6/6 in the Crown section, and to all of our winners!

Final standings: https://s3.chess-results.com/tnr1219161.aspx?lan=1&art=4&flag=30&SNode=S0

List of winners: https://forum.chesstalk.com/forum/chesstalk-canada-s-chess-discussion-board-go-to-www-strategygames-ca-for-your-chess-needs/243418-2025-toronto-open

ACC's very own Nihad and Umid represented Toronto in the Detroit vs. Toronto matchup as part of the Great Lakes Youth Chess Cup this weekend organized by Toronto Chess Club! They took home the top two trophies in both the rapid and blitz events.

Special thanks to Detroit City Chess Club for visiting our city; congratulations to Detroit on winning the matchup!

ACC hosted the 2025 Toronto Blitz Championship, which concluded yesterday with 49 players, including 5 IMs.
IM Anthony Atanasov took home the 2025 Toronto Blitz Champion title with a whopping 13.5 out of 14 points!
Coming in joint second are IM Mark Plotkin and IM Nicholas Vettese on 10.5 points.

Top U18: Saarthak Malakar on 9 points.
Top S50: IM Michael Barron on 9 points.
Top women: WFM Oksana Golubeva and Nicole Woo on 8 points.
Top ACC members: Amirmahdhi Hosseinzadeh and Nihad Mammadov on 7.5 points.

Full standings here: https://chess-results.com/tnr1181453.aspx?lan=1&art=1&flag=30

Thank you to John Upper for the photos!

Annex Chess Club would like to congratulate Board Member Heidi Gay, who recently passed the International Arbiter exam at the 15th IA Seminar. https://arbiters.fide.com/news/10031

IA Sabrina De San Vicente, one of the seminar lecturers, remarks that "Heidi was an exceptionally well-prepared participant. As co-lecturer, I appreciated her thoughtful contributions from her experience at the Candidates and other international events to the seminar. She is a great asset to her chess club and I wish her all the best."

Heidi writes:
"Thank you to Annex Chess Club for sponsoring my participation in the 15th IA seminar, organized by the FIDE Arbiters' Commission. It means the world to have the club's support in my arbiter career.

Over two weekends, I had the incredible opportunity to learn from two extremely experienced lecturers, IA Sabrina de San Vicente, who was recently Chief Arbiter at the 2025 Women's World Championship Match, as well as IA Jens Wolter, who has served as Chief Arbiter at multiple editions of the world-renowned Grenke Open.

We covered various topics from pairings to the role of a Chief Arbiter in large teams. I would like to take this opportunity to thank both of them for their time and patience in answering questions and clarifying ambiguities. The 25 participants at the seminar represented 18 federations, and it was also interesting to be able to hear of others' experience from around the world."

Congratulations to IA/IO Hal Bond for his induction to the Canadian Chess Hall of Fame! We would also like to thank MPP Mary-Margaret McMahon for attending and making the ceremonial first move for GM Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux before Round 7 of the 89th Canadian National Chess Championships.

Many thanks to our photographer Derek Ma for the wonderful photos of the 2025 Canadian Closed, which was ACC's first ever national event.

Full album here: 201444602@N06/albums/72177720325676957/" rel="ugc" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/201444602@N06/albums/72177720325676957/

📸 Derek Ma

ACC is the home of CHAMPIONS! 🏆

Congratulations to Nihad Mammadov, U12 Ontario Champion (5/5) 🥇 and Umid Allahverdi, U14 Ontario Champion (4.5/5) 🥇 (on a play-off tiebreak)!

📸 Toronto Chess Centre

ACC had the honor of hosting the 89th Canadian Chess Championship and the 22nd Canadian Women's Chess Championship over Easter weekend (17-22 April 2025). This was the club's first ever national event.

Congratulations to IM Nikolay Noritsyn and WIM Li Yunshan for their third and maiden titles respectively!