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First the easy one: The St Petersburg section of the 57th Russian Championship is being covered fairly comprehensively by the Russian Chess web site. They have results, tables, games, pictures, and even live coverage. Here is the latest standing and a couple of pictures. The games are given in the link section at the bottom of the page.
57th Russian Championship St Petersburg section after five rounds
| No. | PNo. | Name | Score | WP | SB | PS | rat. | TPR | W-We |
| 1. | 1 | Dreev, Alexey | 4.5 | 15.0 | 13.00 | 14.5 | 2689 | 2951 | +1.30 |
| 2. | 16 | Tseshkovsky, Vitaly | 4.0 | 14.5 | 10.75 | 12.5 | 2564 | 2802 | +1.50 |
| 3. | 2 | Khalifman, Alexander | 3.5 | 13.5 | 9.00 | 10.0 | 2668 | 2717 | +0.30 |
| 8 | Epishin, Vladimir | 3.5 | 15.5 | 9.25 | 11.5 | 2610 | 2712 | +0.65 | |
| 5. | 3 | Sakaev, Konstantin | 3.0 | 13.5 | 7.00 | 8.5 | 2665 | 2629 | -0.25 |
| 4 | Zvjaginsev, Vadim | 3.0 | 13.0 | 7.25 | 9.0 | 2654 | 2592 | -0.40 | |
| 5 | Tregubov, Pavel V. | 3.0 | 12.0 | 7.00 | 8.0 | 2636 | 2617 | -0.10 | |
| 6 | Volkov, Sergey | 3.0 | 15.5 | 8.00 | 10.5 | 2629 | 2661 | +0.20 | |
| 9 | Najer, Evgeniy | 3.0 | 13.0 | 6.75 | 9.0 | 2606 | 2630 | +0.15 | |
| 10 | Yakovich, Yuri | 3.0 | 10.5 | 5.75 | 7.5 | 2596 | 2588 | -0.05 | |
| 12 | Yevseev, Denis | 3.0 | 9.0 | 4.75 | 7.5 | 2580 | 2528 | -0.35 | |
| 17 | Shaposhnikov, Evgeny | 3.0 | 12.0 | 5.00 | 9.5 | 2559 | 2546 | -0.08 | |
| 19 | Landa, Konstantin | 3.0 | 15.5 | 9.25 | 9.0 | 2550 | 2665 | +0.80 | |
| 30 | Andreikin, Dmitry | 3.0 | 12.0 | 6.75 | 9.5 | 2418 | 2650 | +1.55 | |
| 31 | Romanov, Evgeny | 3.0 | 13.0 | 7.00 | 9.0 | 2392 | 2662 | +1.80 | |
| 16. | 7 | Alekseev, Evgeny | 2.5 | 13.0 | 5.75 | 8.5 | 2616 | 2525 | -0.60 |
| 18 | Riazantsev, Alexander | 2.5 | 11.5 | 3.25 | 6.0 | 2556 | 2528 | -0.20 | |
| 20 | Popov, Valerij | 2.5 | 12.5 | 5.50 | 7.0 | 2547 | 2549 | +0.00 | |
| 21 | Ivanov, Sergey | 2.5 | 15.0 | 7.25 | 8.0 | 2546 | 2617 | +0.50 | |
| 22 | Belov, Vladimir | 2.5 | 13.0 | 6.50 | 7.5 | 2543 | 2623 | +0.55 | |
| 32 | Danin, Alexandre | 2.5 | 7.0 | 2.50 | 5.0 | 2332 | 2468 | +0.62 | |
| 22. | 13 | Dolmatov, Sergey | 2.0 | 12.5 | 4.75 | 7.0 | 2573 | 2451 | -0.85 |
| 14 | Burmakin, Vladimir | 2.0 | 12.0 | 3.75 | 6.0 | 2571 | 2420 | -1.05 | |
| 15 | Kuzmin, Alexey | 2.0 | 15.0 | 5.00 | 7.5 | 2567 | 2437 | -0.90 | |
| 23 | Kurnosov, Igor | 2.0 | 10.5 | 2.25 | 4.5 | 2543 | 2311 | -1.20 | |
| 24 | Ionov, Sergey | 2.0 | 12.5 | 4.75 | 7.0 | 2538 | 2528 | -0.05 | |
| 25 | Nikolenko, Oleg | 2.0 | 12.0 | 2.00 | 6.0 | 2520 | 2386 | -0.68 | |
| 28 | Solovjov, Sergey I. | 2.0 | 9.0 | 2.75 | 5.0 | 2458 | 2441 | -0.10 | |
| 29 | Nepomniachtchi, Ian | 2.0 | 13.0 | 5.00 | 7.0 | 2445 | 2519 | +0.50 | |
| 30. | 11 | Gleizerov, Evgeny | 1.5 | 11.5 | 3.00 | 5.0 | 2593 | 2304 | -1.95 |
| 26 | Loginov, Valery A | 1.5 | 11.5 | 3.25 | 4.0 | 2516 | 2383 | -0.90 | |
| 27 | Dobrov, Vladimir | 1.5 | 14.0 | 4.25 | 5.5 | 2477 | 2438 | -0.25 | |
| 33. | 33 | Silivanov, Sergej | 1.0 | 11.5 | 0.00 | 3.0 | 2291 | 1863 | -0.76 |
| 34. | 34 | Shapovalenko, Maksim | 0.0 | 10.5 | 0.00 | 0.0 | 0000 | 1772 | 1772 |
The playing venue in the Saint-Petersburg Hotel
Scrolling through the pictures published at Russian Chess we were not able
to detect very many spectators.
A couple of days ago we got a letter from Dr Chris Bradley of Bendigo, Australia:
"I am increasingly frustrated at the lack of news regarding the Russian Championship qualifying round in Tomsk," he wrote. "There are many fine players represented there and, one would expect, many fine games being played. But who is to know? In the bad old days people regularly disappeared to remote parts of Siberia but surely not to Tomsk in 2004?
This follows on many other examples of poor communication from big tournaments in Russia. It would be unbelievable that a tournament boasting so many GM's with Elos over 2500 would be so badly neglected in the West. Is this another example of the sliding prestige accorded Russian Grandmasters in their own country? If anyone in the Tomsk area has a moment to send me some results I would be much obliged."
We went to work, and the odyssey to find the correct web sites and games reminded us of the famous Tom Lehrer "Lobachevsky" song, where an academic is researching a problem for a paper he has to write.
I have a friend in Minsk,
Who has a friend in Pinsk,
Whose friend in Omsk
Has friend in Tomsk
With friend in Akmolinsk.
His friend in Alexandrovsk
Has friend in Petropavlovsk,
Whose friend somehow
Is solving now
The problem in Dnepropetrovsk.
And when his work is done -
Ha ha! - begins the fun.
From Dnepropetrovsk
To Petropavlovsk,
By way of Iliysk,
And Novorossiysk,
To Alexandrovsk to Akmolinsk
To Tomsk to Omsk
To Pinsk to Minsk
To me the news will run,
Yes, to me the news will run!
And then I write
By morning, night,
And afternoon,
And pretty soon
My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed,
When he finds out I publish first!
To
cut a long story short we got the games from Gary Suffield, one of our diligent
Playchess.com broadcast experts, who found them at a Tomsk web site (see links
below) which is totally in Russian. The picture on the right is their front
page banner.
The game transmission is being done using the DGT "Toma" flash client, without PGN download. However Gary, a computer buff, managed to convert them for us, and we provide them for you at the link given at the bottom of the page. Here is current standings after the four rounds we managed to obtain.
