The mighty Russian Team Championship begins tomorrow in Sochi. Many of the world's elite are participating, including Ivanchuk, Svidler, Grischuk, Morozevich, Wang Yue, Gelfand, Ponomariov, Karjakin, Jakovenko, and new Euro Champion Nepomniachtchi. They have a basic English sub-site up that promises results. The live link is here. Games start at 1500 local, 7am Eastern time.
Last year Tomsk-400 took the title comfortably, but their top boards aren't back, at least not with Tomsk. They're actually stronger on paper this year with Ponomariov on board one. Four teams have three 2700 players, yikes.
Wow, the one team nobody will want to have to face is "SPb Chess Fed": top four boards are Ivanchuk, Svidler, Vitiugov and Movsesian, all 2700+'s. Ouch!
It's a round robin tournament, so everyone will face everyone ... . And the following teams aren't very far behind and actually stronger on the lower boards:
Yugra (Grischuk, Jakovenko, Malakhov, Rublevsky)
ShSM (Gelfand, Karjakin, Wang Hao, Caruana)
Economist (Wang Yue, Eljanov, Tomashevsky, Alekseev)
So the entire competition is mighty or "ouchy" strong ... . BTW, Morozevich isn't mentioned on any team, has he dropped out again (as already for Amber)?
Hi Thomas! I've missed your "I'm-feeling-inferior-so-I'll-over-compensate-with-a-needless-counter-post-with-a-pointless-question-at-the-end-to-try-and-slip-by" rants; where have you been lately? lol
Nice game by Karjakin. I like how the white bishops are bottled up in the end game
Moro's participating? I was looking for him in the list of participating players and couldn't find him. Seems to me that he ducked out.
Moro is sick!
Nice win by [ctrl+v]Nepomniachtchi against Grischuk today. His live rating is around 2690--ten more points to break 2700 and join three other 1990ers above that level (Carlsen, Karjakin, Vachier-Lagrave, Nepomniachtchi).
It seems as though Grischuk got into horrible time trouble again and blundered on move 40 - but as GM Zagrebelny wrote at Chesspro - "Nepomniashi has been playing quickly recently. And well. Just like the young Anand!" http://chesspro.ru/chessonline/onlines/index_3076.html
Online commentary of Gelfand-Nepomniashi today: http://chesspro.ru/chessonline/onlines/index_3077.html
And some chess (why not?): Has Grischuk's piece sacrifice on move 13 (in what seems to be a sideline of the Anti-Moscow gambit) been played before? He certainly has compensation, while being behind on the clock as usual - was it improvisation over the board rather than home preparation?
The attack is in danger of fizzling out, (move 19) I think.
Hmmm, on move 21 I think white has still some threats (against f7) and the black pieces can hardly move. But Grischuk is down to 7 minutes (vs. 25 for Gelfand, not too much either). We will have to wait for
1) the result of the game
2) subsequent analyses pointing out what the players missed in mutual time trouble!?
Nepo(ctrl+v)-Ivanchuk today looks like it should be good! http://chesspro.ru/chessonline/onlines/index_3084.html
Nepo-Chucky draw. Gelfand just blew a winning endgame around move 70. His endgame technic hasn't been much impressive lately...