Fr om September 15 to 30, Yekaterinburg hosted the Russian Chess Championship for men and women. For two full weeks, the battles at the chess tables raged on at the Kalininets sports and recreation center.
The participants included 34 men and 13 women from 16 regions of the country, who competed in intellectual chess contests — in blitz, individual, and team disciplines.
At the opening ceremony, the participants were warmly welcomed by Sergey Kulkov, Director of the Rodnik Center for Adaptive Sports; Andrey Guba and Lyudmila Cheremera, chairpersons of regional branches of the All-Russian Federation of Sports of the Deaf and the All-Russian Society of the Deaf; as well as chief referee Ekaterina Makogon and line referee Alexey Dubrovskikh.
On the very first day of competition, the winners and prize-winners in the fastest and most unpredictable game, the blitz discipline, were determined. They were:
Men:
1. David Bogdan (Krasnodar Krai)
2. Mikhail Gabdulin (Chelyabinsk Oblast)
3. Aldar Oorzhak (Moscow)
Women:
1. Yulia Turkeeva (Sverdlovsk Oblast)
2. Kira Drugova (Saint Petersburg)
3. Olga Gerasimova (Sverdlovsk Oblast)
Following the speed blitz, 34 men and 13 women competed against each other in the individual classical tournament for almost a full week. The athletes had to play a long 9 rounds under the Swiss system with a time control of 90 minutes + 30 seconds per move. It was in this discipline that a sensational result was achieved by a nine-year-old prodigy from Ryazan, Ilya Prikaznov, who defeated one adult opponent after another.
Between games, participants took walks to see the city's sights and also visited a museum and the metro. The athletes also paid a respectful visit to the resting place of Alexander Gerasimov, one of the strongest deaf chess players in Russia, who passed away prematurely two years ago.
Individual Classical Tournament Results:
Men:
1st place - Andrey Onishchenko (Moscow)
2nd place - Andrey Skorobogatykh (Voronezh Oblast)
3rd place - Ilya Prikaznov (Ryazan Oblast)
Women:
1st place - Yulia Turkeeva (Sverdlovsk Oblast)
2nd place - Alina Osmanova (Republic of Mordovia)
3rd place - Kira Drugova (Saint Petersburg)
The final discipline of the multi-day chess marathon was the team competition, wh ere seven teams (Moscow, Sevastopol, St. Petersburg, Republic of Bashkortostan, Sverdlovsk, Rostov, and Moscow Oblasts) battled over four days for the title of the country's strongest quartet.
The teams fought in an intellectual contest using a round-robin system. At first, everything went according to a predictable script — the Muscovites were in the lead, crushing all their opponents. By the fifth and sixth rounds, three teams (St. Petersburg, Moscow Oblast, and Sverdlovsk Oblast) were vying for the remaining podium spots.
Subsequently, the guests from St. Petersburg unexpectedly lost to the quartet representing the host region and were left out of the medals. The final chess battle for 2nd and 3rd places between the teams from Moscow Oblast and Yekaterinburg ended in a hard-fought draw (2:2), which allowed the latter to clinch the coveted silver.
Results:
1. Moscow (Roman Pogoskin, Andrey Smirnov, Andrey Onishchenko, Alexey Petrov)
2. Sverdlovsk region (Natalia Kudryavtseva, Yulia Turkeeva, Olga Gerasimova, Maxim Rukavishnikov)
3. Moscow region (Irek Galeev, Viktor Varezhkin, Andrey Maslov, Valery Kozlov)
Text: Nurlan Tazhigulov, Olga Troynikova
Photo: Lyubov Kireeva
Translation: Daria Kudelina
