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.