Rasmus Svane: "16 hours by train and taxi to Apolda"

Of course, the focus of team tournaments is always on the team score. Personally, it would be nice to win a few games and gain some Elo.

We're going into the tournament as clear favorites and of course our goal is to win the tournament. Apart from that, Apolda will hopefully be a good opportunity to gain further experience as a team before the Chess Olympiad in September.  Vincent Keymer is not at the Mitropa Cup and at the moment there are two other clear candidates for the national team with Niclas Huschenbeth and Dennis Wagner, so it is of course unclear whether we will play with a similar team constellation at the Chess Olympiad.

In chess:
I usually get up very late, between 10:30 and 12:00, for tournaments that start at 3:00, like the Mitropa Cup. So I usually miss breakfast or eat something in my room. Before and after lunch (usually around 1 pm) I repeat my variations, often until just before the game, although it would be better to finish a little earlier and relax a little more.

Questions of nutrition:
Nutritionally, I don't do anything special. I always try to eat enough before the game so that I don't get hungry during the game. Other than that, I try to avoid too much sugar before the game. During the game I drink water and sometimes eat bananas or granola bars.

Relaxing, sport, free time:
After the game, there is usually a short period of time before and after dinner that is free before the pairings for the next day are announced. I use this time to analyze the day's game, relax a bit, and go for a walk or a run if my game ended early enough. In the evening, I start preparing for the next day. I look at the opponent's repertoire, think about what I want to play against different openings and analyze variations if there is something relevant to analyze. I usually go to sleep between 0 and 2 o'clock.

At the moment I'm in the process of planning my year, some things are still open. Most likely I will play at the German Championships as well as the European Individual Championships in November. Of course I would also like to play again for the national team at the Chess Olympiad in September. Apart from that I play in various leagues in Germany, Denmark, England and Austria, and there will certainly be a few more tournaments to come.

Since Apolda is the hometown of the national junior coach Bernd Vökler, I have been here a few times for courses with the Prinzengruppe in 2011 or training camps in connection with the Apolda Open in 2008 and 2009, in which I participated. Apart from that, I played at the German Championship in Apolda in 2017 and finished as a good second place. I associate the championship with one of my most adventurous train journeys from Lübeck to Apolda, which ended up taking 16 hours instead of five and ended with a taxi ride from Göttingen to Apolda, arriving at 5 am before the first round. On the plus side, a few days later I won the beauty prize for a game in the form of a 60 Euro ice cream voucher and was able to take almost the entire tournament out for ice cream.