Genrikh Chepukaitis
Review after round 7
4 rounds are left until the finish. Grandmaster V. Loginov,
the champion from the last century, is the leader. Also the
unpretentious result of +2 was achieved by the youngest
participant, E. Alexeev. So they scored 4,5 each. International
master Sivokho, the trainer of the young star, and grandmaster
Ionov have 4 points each. The strongest players of St.Petersburg
don’t play at this tournament. Though St.Petersburg Chess
Federation attempted to make the tournament more imposing, it
seems that they did not even try to invite the 14th
World Champion Khalifman, grandmasters Svidler, Sakaev, Salov or
Solozhenkin. E. Shaposhnikov who was the champion in 1999 and
shared first place with Loginov in 2000 decided to play in the
semi-final, showed a poor result there and thus lost his right to
play in the final tournament. He was quite upset, but instead he
found himself free to go to Kazan and won there the Russia
Championship under 20. He is a high level player, 1 m 90 cm high.
He really brought the first prize from Kazan: the round sum of
1000 roubles reveals much about the Russia Chess Federation, and
our local St.Petersburg Federation looks still quite impressive
after this. FIDE president K. Ilyumzhinov is silent, he seems not
to be going to do anything about this. So chess in Russia can
share the fate of our ice-hockey rather soon.
As for the final – the only person to defeat the young star
E. Alexeev so far was GM Sergey Ivanov. In the French Defence,
which Ivanov knows as an expert, the boy decided to sacrifice
some pawns. Ivanov took with pleasure. Having disregarded
Fisher’s warning “Pawns are the soul of the game”, the
young player failed to find sufficient tactical resources to save
his position.
Alekseev, Evgeny - Ivanov, Sergey
Round 4
