Morozevich again showing great form in Saratov
Alexander Morozevich is continuing the splendid form he's been showing thus far in the summer of 2011. In a new strong tournament in Saratov, Russia he is leading the field with the super score of 5/6. He is 1.5 points ahead of Peter Leko and the Evgeny's Alekseev and Tomashevsky.
| Event | Governor's Cup | PGN via TWIC |
| Dates | October 7th-20th, 2011 |
| Location | Poikovsky, Russia |
| System | 10-player round robin |
| Players | Tomashevsky, Andreikin, Alekseev, Morozevich, Vitiugov, Ponomariov, Moiseenko, Eljanov, Shirov, Ni Hua, Leko, Roiz |
| Rate of play | 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and then 30 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment from move 1 |
There's so many strong tournaments going on these days! This month a new top event was added to the calendar, called the 'Governor's Cup of the Saratov region'. It's a 12-player round robin with Evgeny Tomashevsky, Dmitry Andreikin, Evgeny Alekseev, Alexander Morozevich, Nikita Vitiugov (all Russia), Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexander Moiseenko, Pavel Eljanov (all Ukraine), Alexei Shirov (Spain), Ni Hua (China), Peter Leko (Hungary) and Michael Roiz (Israel). The games are played at the FIDE time control; the venue is the auditorium of the Saratov State Socio-Economic University.
Like the tournament in Poikovsky that finished yesterday, the Saratov event isn't really focusing on online coverage. In fact it seems that there's no website at all! Many sources have given the Russian Chess Federation website instead and as Colin McGourty noted, some Russian sources suggest chessportal.ru which does provide a broadcast of the moves but that's all.
And like the Karpov tournament in Poikovsky, the tournament started quietly, with six draws in the first round - despite the presence of players such as Morozevich and Shirov. Luckily things changed quickly with an exciting second round that saw wins for Moiseenko, Morozevich and Alekseev, who beat top seed Ponomariov in a Berlin Wall. In the third round Morozevich became the sole leader, beating Moiseenko in a wonderful Sämisch King's Indian with Black. The next day he increased his lead as the only player to win, against Ni Nua, and in the fifth round the Russian also beat Eljamov. After six rounds Morozevich is already 1.5 points ahead, and has a performance rating very close to 3000!
Governor's Cup (Saratov) 2011 | Round 6 Standings
Comparing the tournament one more time with Poikovsky: after six rounds the drawing percentage in Saratov is also very high: 75%. But it would be too easy to leave it at that. In Saratov many of these draws have been fascinating fights as well! A few of those have also been included in the selection of games below:
[board]/drupal7/sites/default/files/games/saratov11/saratovcup11_r5b.pgn[/board]
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.”
In October, Peter's first book The Chess Revolution will be published!
Company Contact and News Accreditation:
Email: peter@chess.com FOR SUPPORT PLEASE USE chess.com/support!
Phone: 1 (800) 318-2827
Address: 877 E 1200 S #970397, Orem, UT 84097
