News
About Natalia
Games
Our Team
Articles
Gallery
Chess Links
Play Chess
Pogonina's Chess Shop
Advertise
Contact Us

Highlights

 Follow Natalia on Twitter:

http://www.pogonina.com/images//nat%20twit.jpg

 
Please help Natalia promote chess by making a donation:



 

Link to Pogonina.com

Play chess at ChessOk

365Chess.com Biggest Online Chess Games Database





Check qyto.jp for Japanese bitcoin casinos.

Here you can find Swedish sites without license, Spelkonto utan licens.

Find new casinos at the brand new Online Casinos XYZ site with reviews and ratings of the best gambling sites for UK players.

Play the popular King Kong Cash slot machine at Slot Strike, the new slot site for UK players.

Grab the chance to win big with a high RTP on the goonies slot progressive jackpot.

Goodluckmate.com - made an easier way to find Skrill casinos

Nettikasinot.media lists the best online casinos for Finnish gamblers. For more information visit: https://www.nettikasinot.media/suomalaiset-kasinot/  

Sweden is now a regulated market, which means that as a player you can only play at casinos with a license. See all regulated
casinos in Sweden by Mr casinova.

To find the best casino in Norway take look at
norske casino at CasinoPiloten.

Find the best Norwegian casinobonus at NyeCasinoNorge.org.

Get exclusive access to a
huge range of free spins & no deposit casino offers with Spin Bonus.

Try the exhilarating new 20p Roulette game.
Play it online at thecasinodb and find casinos to play for real money.

Get the best casino bonus information with Casino Gorilla.

Chess games at Gametop

CasinoAdvisers.com For you that want to find online casino strategies, guides and a good casino bonus!

 
   ...


Polls
What's your FIDE rating?

What should Natalia do to make Pogonina.com more interesting for you?

Who is your favorite active top player?

Poker or chess: what do you like more?

What's the largest monetary chess prize you ever won?

How much time per day do you spend on chess-related activities?

Do you have a special chess mascot (pen, badge, toy, etc.)?

Which time control do you prefer for over-the-board tournaments?

The strongest women's chess team in the world is

What is the strongest national chess team in the world?

Will Magnus Carlsen's rating reach FIDE 2900?

Do you think you can become a GM?

Tactics Festival - Part I

User Rating: / 0
PoorBest 
Written by Administrator   
Tuesday, 24 April 2012

http://www.pogonina.com/images/stories/1331194621_b_natalja-pogonina-2.jpg
by Natalia Pogonina for her
Chess.com Tuesday column

The traditional Russian Team Chess Championship (both mens and womens divisions) was held from April 8th to 16th in the Loo district of the resort city Sochi on the coast of the Black sea. From 2005 to 2011 I have been playing in the womens tournament, but this year decided to try to compete among men. The reason for this was prosaic: the club I am playing for, AVS, has decided to skip the event this year and go straight for the Eurocup (we are the reigning Eurocup champions, so we dont need to qualify there from the Russian Championship). Also, the ECU rules forbid players from competing for two clubs simultaneously in the same league. However, the mens division is different. As a result, I joined the friendly and mostly young team Rakita. Our line-up looked like this: 1. GM Ivan Popov, 2605; 2. GM Boris Savchenko, 2580; 3. GM Alexandr Danin, 2539, 4. GM Alexandr Ivanov, 2433; 5. IM Grigory Oparin, 2487, 6. IM Mikhail Antipov, 2435; 7. WGM Natalia Pogonina 2449; 8. Vitaly Babynin 2021. In each match 6 players took part, while two took a rest. Our team was seeded 11th. The tournament itself was a Swiss event with 18 teams participating.


Previously nearly all the worlds top players have been competing in the Russian League, but lately the financial crisis has taken its toll, and some of the big names were missing. Nonetheless, about half the worlds top-rated grandmasters showed up. The rating favorite and reigning champion, SHSM-64 was equipped with six 2700+ grandmasters and led by the worlds #7 player Fabiano Caruana. Economist-SGSU had 5 2700+ players and was headed by the inimitable Alexander Morozevich. World Cup Champion Peter Svidler, Russias #1 young hope Sergei Karjakin, and European Champion Dmitry Jakovenko were the leaders of the teams Saint Petersburg Chess Federation, Tomsk-400. and Ugra respectively. The full team compositions can be viewed here.  It is worth noting that the St-Petersburg team is the reigning champion of the Eurocup, so this time we had 5 qualifying spots instead of the usual 4. The top-5 teams mentioned above were vastly superior as compared to the others, although the short 7-round distance offered the underdogs certain chances to qualify, or at least affect the final standings.


In the very first round my team Rakita had to face the super club Economist-SGSU which hails from my home city Saratov. The guys are my friends, and I have always been rooting for them. This case was an exception. The match was hard-fought, and we were quite close to drawing it. However, in the end our opponents clinched the victory: 4-2.

loo1.jpg
Economist SGSU vs Rakita. Photo by Mariya Fominykh, chesspro.ru


In the first round all the five super clubs won their matches. Especially merciless was Tomsk-400, which wiped out Zhiguli with a perfect 6-0 score.


Now that some of you are probably bored from reading about other players feats, I would like you to actually work on your own chess and solve a few nice puzzles from the 1st rounds games. First try to find the solution yourself, and then check out the annotations, by clicking on "move list":

 

In the second round two of the favorites clashed: Saratov-SGSU vs Ugra. ShSM-64 had to face the #6 club Polytechnik. The guys from Nizhni Tagil usually have a strong and interesting team, but so far they havent achieved anything significant. This year they were in contention for the qualifying spots. Nonetheless, SHSM-64 won with an impressive 4.5-1.5 score. In the main confrontation of the day Economist defeated Ugra: Morozevich beat Jakovenko and Eljanov scored against Malakhov. Alexander Morozevich is a true fighter! In round 1 he blundered terribly against our player Ivan Popov and lost, but in round two he came back and basically crushed the reigning European Champion Dmitry Jakovenko.

loo2.jpg

Economist-SGSU vs Ugra. Photo by Mariya Fominykh, chesspro.ru


The second round didnt bring any real upsets as well. Our club drew the Kemerovo team. Before the round Alexandr Danin had been telling me stories about how two of his teammates drew their games against Kemerovo last year while both being a piece down. He even showd me the games. After the match we had a good laugh at the team meeting: I also drew Cheremnova being a piece down. As a result, Alexandr was asked to provide me with winning examples next time. Laughing


Here are three more challenges for you to try to deal with:



To be continued


Bookmark and Share

 




Be first to comment this article

Write Comment
Name:
E-mail
Homepage
Title:
BBCode:Web AddressEmail AddressBold TextItalic TextUnderlined TextQuoteCodeOpen ListList ItemClose List
Comment:



Code:* Code

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 24 April 2012 )
 
< Prev   Next >