3 May 2016
Help Your Opponent Join the Action!
The starting rounds of the Russian Club Championship in the review of Vladimir Barsky.
"We cannot predict the way our word is going to respond." The arbiter wanted to open the Russian Team Championships with a usual phrase, "Those playing Black set the clocks running for those playing White", but due to buck fever he dropped the word "clocks". The phrase gained a new meaning, and it took a few minutes for one of the players to stop laughing.
"In the rapid succession of days, flying vehicles and lights he started working all by itself..."
Fortunately, those who gathered in Sochi are not cyborgs. This time the Premier League features only five teams playing, but to make up for the shortage the event has been converted into a double round-robin, meaning that the number of key matches between Siberia and the Bronze Horsemanand the Moscow team will be doubled. A tournament of the first board leaders alone would rank as high as any super tournament with the team lineups including Vladimir Kramnik, Sergey Karjakin, Peter Svidler, Gata Kamsky and Sanan Sjugirov. Meanwhile, board two lineup is equally impressive with Alexander Grischuk, Dominguez Leinier, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Vladislav Artemiev, and Igor Lysyj. The renowned favorites will be challenged by Ladya of Kazan and Zhiguli of the Samara region. It should be noted that the Sochi event began with a minute of silence in memory of the young grandmaster Ivan Bukavshin from Togliatti. This year his friend Igor Lysyj and the young Muscovite Grigoriy Oparin are playing for Zhiguli. It has been only recently that Vanya and Grisha used to be teammates for the Princes team at the Nutcracker generations match-tournament and used to put up praiseworthy fighting to the highly experienced Kings. Although it was less than half a year ago, it somehow feels as though it were in some other life...
The women's championship features nine teams and the favorites are Ugra and ShSM. However, no less good is Boavishta with their black and white chess-style T-shirts, while the University from Belorechensk with its legionnaires from Belarus and the Ukraine is anything but an easy rival as well. Let us not forget about Ladya with the great Alisa Galliamova on board one! All of us remember how a year ago the St. Petersburg team with the official name SDYUSSHOR SHSH caused a lot of havoc - so here they are again in Sochi, additionally reinforced with Anna Styazhkina. Now that we mention it, the first round saw the St. Petersburg chess players being defeated by Donchanka, whose ranks this year have been joined by two young "starlets" - Aleksandra Maltsevskaya and Bibisara Assaubayeva from Kazakhstan. In short, the women are expected, as always, to come up with the biggest number of good and multistyle surprises.
Boavishta looks great not only on a football field
It’s worth adding that the women’s team of Tolyatti is called Bukavushki in Bukavshin’s honor. However, their colleagues’ team from the Higher League, which also represents the city where Lada/Zhiguli cars are manufactured, bears a less lyrical name of Bulbasaurs. It turns out that Vanya’s childhood nickname was Bulba.
Not only Bulbasaurs has a more threatening tone to it, but considering that board one is no less a person than Denis Khismatullin, no easy life should be expected by his opponents. Next in line are the young players such as the Ukrainian Vitaliy Bernadskiy and the participants of the Junior Championship in Loo Daniil Yuffa and Maxim Lugovskoy, whereas the back rank is covered by Pavel Maletin, the Novosibirsk Chess Federation President. It is clear that the young grandmaster, the talented analyst and coach wants from time to time to switch from administrative and economic affairs into the field of chess itself.
The friends of Ivan Bukavshin are ranked third in the start list, whereas the foremost titled club is Malachite from Yekaterinburg. Although this year Yekaterinburg could not afford the Premier League financially, Naum Rashkovsky managed to put together a more than decent lineup for the Higher League: Pavel Ponkratov, Sergey Volkov, my colleague Dmitry Kryakvin and Andrey Shariyazdanov. Naum Nikolayevich himself, having recently celebrated his 70th anniversary on a grand scale with blitz, cancan and other luxuries involved, decided to remember his youth and headed a team of Malachite into the seniors tournament. Maybe it's for the best that Sochi lacks a gambling zone after all! Besides, the tournament features other distinguished senior players such as Evgeni Vasiukov, Evgeny Sveshnikov, Evgenij Kalegin, Vadim Faibisovich, Vladimir Karasev, and Evgeni Dragomarezkij. The Sochi resort city has put up two teams with one-of-a-kind names: Good Hearts and Be Our Guests. Being so good and so kind, the hospitable owners scored one point out of eight games in the first round...
Evgeni Vasiukov is watching the games of his teammates
Not as populated as we would like them to be (although more representative than the previous year’s event) were the tournaments of boys and girls. The reason is clear: the Russian children’s championships have been ongoing in Loo since mid-April, while unstoppable playing during a whole month is challenging both from the physical and financial points of view. However, there were not a few players who moved from Loo into the Zhemchuzhina hotel and have joined the ranks, adult chess clubs included. In particular, we would like to single out the Youth of Moscow with the Russian U17 Champion Polina Shuvalova: the girls decided to test their strength in the women's championship.
Already as soon as today, May 2, yet another two tournaments are scheduled to start: the Zhemchuzhina Open and the children's Orphanages and Boarding Schools Championship. We will do our best to tell you everything and not to miss anything!
