Russian Club Cup 2010

Arguably the strongest national team chess championships in the world starts on 1 April in Dagomys. 

The powerful Russian Team Chess Championships (a.k.a. the Russian Club Cup) is an event which produces the highest quality games, featuring as it does some of the very best players in the world.

A total of ten teams will be competing in the men's event, with last year's champions Tomsk hoping to defend their title.

Information on the event is a little thin on the ground, but coverage should be provided by the website of the Russian Chess Federation.  Many tournaments provide translations of their websites in English, but this tournament is an exception*, so get Babelfish ready!

The excellent talent on display is expected to include Vassily Ivanchuk, Peter Svidler, Boris Gelfand, Wang Yue, Alexander Grischuk, Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexei Shirov (pictured), Sergey Karjakin and Fabiano Caruana.

A separate women's team competition runs concurrently with the men's event and also features some of the best players in the world, including world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk and someone that all Chess.com members should be very familiar with - Natalia Pogonina!

Natalia promises coverage of the event on her website, and you can read her preview here.  Thanks Natalia and good luck!

*The English version of the website hasn't been updated since 2007!