7 June 2018

The Land of Magnolia is Rich in Chess

Eteri Kublashvili reports from the Belaya Ladya Final 

The day of Belaya Ladya’s round two saw a big simul, with about a hundred people showing up to try their hand against seasoned die-hards. A queue of children, parents and coaches formed to enter the Rubin playhall some 15-20 prior to the start of the simul. With everyone impatient to go ahead, the flood of children rushing into the room when the doors opened was something of a ninth wave.  

Acting as simul-givers were Alexander Morozevich, Evgeniy Najer, Andrey Shariyazdanov, Sergey Janovsky, Vladimir Barsky and Mark Glukhovsky.  

This said, only the RCF executive director managed to win all his games. Besides making draws with Ben Ari Yannay of Israel and Cristi-Iulian Coca of Romania, Alexander Morozevich went down to the young Moscow starlet Savva Vetokhin. Evgeny Najer drew Daniil Pankov of Kurgan Oblast (Russia). Sergey Yanovsky lost to Kirill Romanov (Volgograd Oblast) and made draws with Rajana Gibadullina (Republic of Tatarstan), Artem Shinkarov (Nizhny Novgorod Oblast), Andrei Priseajniuc (Moldova) and Malik Chekkuev (Moscow Oblast). Andrey Shariyazdanov shared a point with Artur Kulik of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. Meanwhile, Vladimir Barsky drew Kirill Kazantsev (The Komi Republic), Matvei Smirnov (Kostroma Oblast) and Semen Chernyshov (Khabarovsk Krai), which surely lifted the kids’ spirits immensely.  

Running in parallel on the sports ground was a football match, which also brought together children from various teams and countries. An additional program, which that day was made up of "Photo studio", "Hat" and "Mafia", also gathers many fans of intellectual competitions.  

A blitz tournament took place in the evening and gathered as many as 250 players of various age groups. This is the first time a large-scale event like this has been organized as part of Belaya Ladya. Arbiters and secretaries worked as a smooth team (the experience gained while working in the Loo events makes itself known!), but 11 rounds with so many players lasted deep into the night anyway. There were not a few who dropped along the way, but the most stubborn played it out. Let us add that this a FIDE- and RCF-rated tournament. 

With 9.5 points under his belt triumphing was Sergey Pozin. Ruslan Yandarbiev, Tumen Tsybikov, Vladimir Barsky and Mark Glukhovsky finished with 9 points. This is exactly the order the additional tiebreakers have sorted them out into. The blitz tournament and simul tables can be found on the "Tournaments" tab. 

Rounds three and four of the main event took place on Monday. Treading heavily on the land of Sochi are the Indian legionaries -- Belaya Ladya’s previous edition winners, with Gukesh on board one, just power through the opposition. That day they outplayed teams of Sverdlovsk and Astrakhan Oblasts. The Indian team has 14.5 points at the moment.  

Trailing a point and a half behind are representatives of Sverdlovsk Oblast, and 12 points are with the team of Moscow.  

Monday also gave start to the conference dedicated to the Universal Chess Education in Russia program, which we will catch you up with separately. However, we offer you here some pictures of this interesting event anyway.    

In store for the kids in the evening program was an instructive rendezvous with Evgeny Najer and Alexander Morozevich on the one hand, and an intellectual game Mathematical Challenges on the other. As a senior volunteer Ekaterina informed, as many 12 teams showed up to cross swords with each other in this contest.  

A lot of interesting is in store for us yet, both in and out of chess. 

Just in case, let me remind you how to download pictures. Dear readers, first of all place the cursor so that a hand transforms into an arrow. Then right-click and choose Save Image As from the pop-up menu.

Pictures by Eteri Kublashvili, unless noted otherwise