Kirill Alekseenko: No Amount of Words Can Suffice to Describe My Excitement

Exclusive interview with the bronze medalist of the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss.

Having taken third place at the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss qualification tournament, the St. Petersburg grandmaster is now heading to Batumi for the European Team Championship as part of the Russian team. In between, Kirill Alekseenko was kind enough to give an interview for the RCF website. 

– Kirill, our congratulations on your big success! What are your impressions of the Isle of Man event?

–Thank you! It proved an exciting competition full of challenges. It is so great that there we now have a Swiss tournament giving a chance to more than 100 players to battle it out for a seat in the Candidates. It did a lot to attract many 2700-rated players, not to mention Carlsen and Caruana.

It is hard to anticipate good results in the face of such a solid lineup. All in all, my prime aim was to demonstrate decent performance. However, not only was I pitted against elite players in more than one game, I also managed to score +4 and clinch into the top three. No amount of words will suffice to describe my excitement.

– Which game of yours do you rate as the best one here?

– An interesting game of vital importance was against one of the strongest Russian players Sergey Karjakin. It being round ten, it was my last chance to make it into the top three. I sidestepped mainline theory as early as the opening in an attempt to direct the game into the channel of the complex fight. By move eight, together with my opponent we burned an hour and a half of our thinking time. Sergey came up with an enterprising piece sacrifice, but followed it up with not the most precise way of maintaining tension so that I managed to hold my ground and convert my up a bishop superiority in the endgame.

– What about your first over the board encounter with Magnus Carlsen?

– I think every player dreams of being faced off with the reigning world champion. It is a rare occasion to share an event with Magnus. This being our first game, I was eager to interrupt his unbeaten streak (laughs).

– The European Championship is being your first team event, do you feel worried and what result are you aiming at?

– Playing for the national team has been my main goal for a long time. We have no lack of good players, and being a lucky one to make it into the European Team Championship is quite a pleasure. I will definitely try to show my best!

– We wish you good luck in Batumi!

–Thank you!

Questions by Dmitry Kryakvin. Photos by Maria Emelianova and John Saunders