Karjakin and Svidler lead 63rd Russian Championship
Sergei Karjakin and Peter Svidler are sharing the lead at the 63rd Russian Championship Superfinal in Moscow. The two scored 3 points out of 4 games and are followed by Ian Nepomniachtchi and Alexander Grischuk, who have half a point less.General info
The Superfinal of the 63rd Russian Chess Championship for men is held in Moscow at the Central Chess Club, from 10 to 22 December. Alexander Grischuk (2771) defends his title against Sergei Karjakin (2760), Dmitry Jakovenko (2726), Peter Svidler (2722), Ian Nepomniachtchi (2722), Vladimir Malakhov (2720), Nikita Vitiugov (2709), Evgeny Tomashevsky (2699), Igor Kurnosov (2676), Vadim Zvjaginsev (2676), Denis Khismatullin (2659) and Vladimir Potkin (2646).The time control is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes to end of the game with 30 second increment. The rounds start at 15.00 local time (14.00 CET); the last round three hours earlier. 17 december is a rest day.Rounds 1-4
This very strong tournament will see 11 rounds, of which now 4 have been played. Svidler and Karjakin both started with a draw, then won two in a row and then drew each other. A nice game from the first round is Khismatullin-Nepomniachtchi, where black uses the a pin over the e-file several times - a knight goes from f6 to d5 and b4 and back, with a pawn on e4, and the move ...Bd5 (with the white pawn still on e4) decides the game! In round 2 Zjaginev's handling of the Qxd4 Sicilian looked to simplistic to pose Karjakin any real problems - in the end the bishop pair, a better centre and an open file directed against the white king must be worth something. Grischuk switches to 1.e4 to beat Vitiugov in an old line of the French Advance.Five times Russian champion Peter Svidler should always be considered one of the big favourites, and St. Petersburg's number one was looking sharp again versus Kurnosov in round 3. Karjakin-Nepomniachtchi was a nice, positional win for the white player, who opted for the quiet 7.Nf3 against "his own" Najdorf.In today's 4th round Nepomniachtchi bounced back with a nice endgame squeeze against Tomashevsky, thus taking over the 3rd spot in the standings from his opponent, shared with Grischuk.
Games rounds 1-4
Game viewer by ChessTempoLinks
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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