Ponomariov leads strong Ukrainian Championship
Ruslan Ponomariov is leading the Ukrainian Championship in Kiev after 8 rounds. The former FIDE World Champion is still undefeated and scored 6/8 and a 2830 performance rating. Pavel Eljanov, Zahar Efimenko and Alexander Moiseenko are close behind.The 80th Ukrainian Championship takes place June 10-21 in The Ukrainian House in Kiev. With an average Elo of 2650.0 it's the strongest Ukrainian championship ever, with three players above 2700 and six above 2600. The rate of play is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves plus 30 minutes to end the game, with a 30-second increment from move 1.In this very strong tournament, former FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov is still undefeated after nine rounds. He beat Anton Korobov, Evgenij Miroshnichenko, Yuri Vovk and Spartak Vysochin and drew with Andrei Volokitin, Alexander Areshchenko, Yuriy Kryvoruchko and also with the other two 2700 players, Pavel Eljanov and today Zahar Efimenko.At the moment of writing the 9th round is still ongoing and it won't be easy for Eljanov, who is in second place half a point behind, to beat Vysochin with Black from their current position (after 23.Rc1), to catch Ponomariov in the standings.Selection of games rounds 1-8
Game viewer by ChessTempo
The venue is the Ukrainian House at Europe square in Kiev...
...where inside there's a good number of spectators watching the show...
...provided by a group of twelve strong grandmasters
Top seed Ruslan Ponomariov is doing well so far...
...while Pavel Eljanov, here at the opening ceremony, is trailing by half a point
Zahar Efimenko in currently shared third place with...
...Alexander Moiseenko
Photos © Ukrainian Chess Federation, more here
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