Jubilee Final of Belaya Ladya to Take Place in Sochi on June 1-11
105 teams are expected to participate in the event.
In 2019, the open all-Russian school chess team event Belaya Ladya is celebrating its 50-year jubilee. The event final is taking place in Dagomys, Sochi, on June 1 – 11. This time we anticipate as many as 105 teams, including 25 from abroad. Making their debut in Dagomys are players from the South America, while the African continent enlarges its representation because of Egypt, Namibia and Sudan.
The tournament is co-organized by the Russian Chess Federation (RCF) and the Ministry of Sport of the Russian Federation.The competition is also supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation, the Federal Grid Company Unified Energy System (FGC UES), and PhosAgro.
A team lineup is four players (with at least one girl) aged up to 14 years inclusive. The competition is a nine-round Swiss. The closing ceremony is scheduled on June 10.
Best foreign players are entitled to participate in the 2020 international tournament Aeroflot Open. The best Russian team will head to France to challenge their French peers – something made possible by Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation and RCF.
Founded in 1969, the all-Russian scholastic chess team event Belaya Ladya has been gaining in the number of participants over the last few years. Participating in qualification tournaments run across all regions of Russia from September 2018 to May 2019 were over 50000 schoolchildren aged under 14.
Beginning with 2015, the final has been elevated to the status of an international event. This year's edition is expecting about 25 international teams, winners of their national competitions. The statistics show schoolchildren from six countries arrive in Dagomys in 2015, nine in 2016, seventeen in 2017, and twenty in 2018.
This edition is expecting to see teams from 80 regions of Russia and such states as Armenia, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, England, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Mongolia, Namibia, Romania, Slovakia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
The team representing orphanages and boarding schools is participating in the final of Belaya Ladya for the fifth year in a row. Representatives of the Lulpan center for orphans and children bereft of parental care from the Republic of Mari El earned their way into the final after winning the Ascension tournament. The Ascension tournament among orphanages and boarding schools took place in March 2019. Participation of this team in Belaya Ladya is made possible via the RCF program aimed at providing chess education to parentless children.
As part of the additional program there is planned a matchup between school teams of Russia and India. The matchup is a two-format contest instandard and blitz chess. A team is made up of two boys and two girls. India's board one – a 12-year old Gukesh – is the world's youngest GM at the moment.
June 3-5 is an international seminar for coaches and teachers run by GM Sergey Janovsky, head coach of the Russian national chess teams.
A rich cultural and entertaining program for young players has become a tradition that begins with the opening ceremony and lasts throughout the entire event and is known to include various contests in football, basketball, badminton, bughouse chess, not to mention the existence of playing hall, creative contests and intellectual quizzes, a movie club and drawing workshops with a team of experienced volunteers. Each evening program will see games analyzed and master classes given in Russian by the senior coach of the Russian women's team, GM Sergei Rublevsky and by GM Pavel Maletin; meanwhile, similar activities in English will be carried out by the former European champion GM Ernesto Inarkiev and senior coach of the Russian junior team GM Mikhail Kobalia.
Running in parallel with Belaya Ladya will be a closing competition of the Chess in Schoolsproject, co-organized by the Russian Chess Federation and the Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation. The closing competition features 11 teams from the Altai, Zabaykalsky, and Krasnodar Krais, from the Bryansk, Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Pskov, and Tula regions, as well as from the republics of Ingushetia, Udmurtia, and Chuvashia.
On June 3-6 there is scheduled an international conference Chess in Schools, participating in which are Russian and international experts to present, among other things, their reports sharing experience and findings of the Chess in Schools project from 11 regions of the Russian Federation.
