The 9th Karpov tournament is taking place from July 8th to 17th 2008 in Poikovsky. The participants are Alexei Shirov (ESP, 2741), Vugar Gashimov (AZE, 2717), Dmitry Jakovenko (RUS, 2709), Sergey Rublevsky (RUS, 2699), Wang Hao (CHN, 2691), Viorel Bologan (MDA, 2686), Ernesto Inarkiev (RUS, 2675), Andrei Volokitin (UKR, 2672), Alexander Onischuk (USA, 2670), and Emil Sutovsky (ISR, 2654).
Search enginges will only retrieve the chess tournament if you search for "Poikovsky". To get some geographical and general information on the Russian town, and not a restaurant in California, you need to search for "Poykovskiy", which is the acceptable transliteration from the Cyrillic.
The town lies to the east of Khanty-Mansyk, where a number of major tournaments were held (e.g. the FIDE World Cup last year). The Khanty-Mansyk Autonomous Area is located on the West-Siberian plain, in the basins of the rivers Ob and Irtysh. the climate is continental, with long severe winter, dropping down to below minus 20 degrees Celsius in January. The region contains huge oil and gas deposits.
Alexei Shirov in Khanty-Mansiysk last winter, in minus
20°C weather
Poikovsky itself lies in the Nefteyugansky region, which is rich in natural resourses. The name of the town comes from the Poika river. In 1998 Poikovsky became a winner of region's competition as the "most comfortable municipal urban and settlement center". The population is around 20,000.
Poykovskiy church (Photo by filipe)
After six rounds of play the standings are as follows:
LinksThe games are being broadcast live on the above sites and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download the free PGN reader ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program to read, replay and analyse the PGN games. |
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