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Russian Rapid Chess Championship-2013: Impressions of a Tourist
Written by Administrator
Saturday, 25 May 2013
Reported by Candidate Master Peter Zhdanov, Editor of Pogonina.com
In the middle of May Natalia Pogonina and I decided to fit into the skin of chess tourists and travel to Russian Rapid Chess Championship in Saint Petersburg. Like one can infer from the pompous title of the tournament, only high-rated chess players (2600+ FIDE for men, 2400+ for women) were invited, as well as "dark horses" - the qualifiers from the regional events.
By candidate master Peter Zhdanov, editor of Pogonina.com
In this special weekly column we will be looking at the most unexpected upsets that happened last week. Players usually face opponents of a similar level. Considerably less frequent are situations when a significantly lower-rated player succeeds in beating a much stronger adversary.
Every year Chess Pro publishes a list of the top games according to the opinion of world's leading grandmasters and journalists. Natalia Pogonina was a member of the panel of judges. Below you can find her votes and the official results:
Games against juniors I find a harrowing experience. Not only do they tend to be massively underrated, but they tend to have the kind of self-belief and fearlessness, tactical sharpness that I had 20 years ago, before I became old, developed a squint and lost all my hair and teeth.
In fact my chances of winning the last two British Chess championships (which admittedly were slim in any case) were ruined by losses to 2100 rated juniors, something that still rankles with me I must admit. This year it's war!
Of late though I have been doing better against juniors. I tend to remind myself during the game, "they are just human, remember that, they are not machines... they can be beaten..."
In the recently completed English Chess League I had a crucial game in the relegation against the up and coming Yang-Fan Zhou. I was playing for Blackthorne Transport, sponsored by a company who deliver freight to Russia (no questions asked) and we needed to beat Guildford 2 to have a chance of staying up.
Yang-Fan Zhou is perhaps best known for once scoring 9/9 in the Brighton masters, the only time I'm aware of, outside Bobby Fischer, (the 1963-64 US Champs, where he scored an extraordinary 11/11) someone scoring 100 percent in an international tournament over nine rounds or more. Perhaps the readers know of other examples?
Natalia Pogonina pulled a Fischer at World Mind Sports Games in 2008 by winning all 11 games and scoring a 2941 performance - Pogonina.com
