The Deadman, just unstoppable in the Mikhail Golubev Cup
On 10th November, 77 players competed in the 5+2 blitz tournament "Mikhail Golubev Cup", organised by the Team Ukraine on Chess.com. (The team earlier held "Pavel Eljanov Cup" and the next tournament in this series will be "Stanislav Bogdanovich Cup").
Prizes were: three books "Understanding the Sicilian" for places 1-3 (provided by the main organiser Alexander Matlak) + two additional prizes (provided by me): chess books by Sergey Tkachenko on the chess history of Odessa, selected randomly for players who occupied places 4 and lower.
The Odessa grandmaster Bogdanovich (who already was in the world's Top 10 blitz for a while) played, using the nickname "GM_Deadman", and has won all his games!
Top final standings & Real names & FIDE blitz ratings:
1. GM Bogdanovich 2712 - 10
2. FM Gritsenko 2402 - 8
3. P.Makarov 2038 - 7.5
4. FM Sodol 2239 - 7.5
5. IM Skliarov 2429 - 7
6. M.Usanov 2078 - 7
7. GM Okhotnik 2342 - 6.5
8. GM Golubev 2321 - 6.5
9. Y.Galichin 2024 - 6.5
10. M.Kepeshchuk 2279 - 6.5
11. GM Sharapov 2367 - 6.5
(77 players)
Playing "out of contest" anyway, perhaps I could have hoped for a better final result, but in the 7th round lost to GM Vladimir Okhotnik, having extra Q + R, due to the Internet disconnection. :)
Below is a really cool game by the tournament's winner:
For the record, below are two games of mine. The first one is against my brother, the 2016 European amateur champion. I can't say that I always win against him.
Another game is versus the 2017 Odessa rapid champion. I know Pavel (Pavlo) from the 1970s. In all these years, we played only a few games, with various conrols. He defeated me for the first time earlier this year in the Yukhtman Memorial (rapid).
I am grateful to all friends and colleagues who participated in the tournament! My former colleague in "Chess Today" IM Nikolai Vlassov of Russia (not particularly a Putin fan), Sarah Hurst (well, and she too), the author of "Curse of Kirsan" and Graham Brown, my former CT colleague - from England, my former colleague is the sport newspaper "Komanda" Igor Schukin, the Ukrainian writer Mykhaylo Brynykh, and many others.
More reports on the tournament are posted by Alexander Matlak (who made two streams: during the first and final rounds) and Pavlo Makarov.
Later there will be a tournament database with the real names of the most players, I'm working on it.
