Genrikh Chepukaitis
One round before the finish
Nobody could have expected, but the new generation seems to
have grown up suddenly. There are two leaders now: the young
non-grandmaster E. Alexeev and the youngest of the participating
grandmasters V. Popov. Both of them have scored plus 3 so far and
have good chances to win the championship. Alexeev’s trainer,
grandmaster S. Ionov, goes third, and he plays against his pupil
in the final round. As for Popov, his opponent will be the former
trainer of our child prodigy S. Sivokho. These coincidence is a
surprise of the lots. So there is an evident intrigue there, and
we are just unable to forecast anything for sure. Qualification
for the Russia Championship and a nice prize fond can generate
not chess problems only, so let’s look what will happen. We
hope that the fans won’t be offended by any doubts about the
chess honour of the players, so may the worthiest win.