Spartak wins Russian Women's League – narrowly

Russian Team Championship and Leagues

The Russian Team Championship is taking place from 4th–10th April 2009. The Higher League, one level below, and Women's League take place from 2nd–10th April 2009.

In round five Tomsk lost an important match against ShSM-64, with Inarkiev and Tiviakov losing to Najer and Caruana. This put ShSM-64 into the lead with eight out of a possible ten match points. SPbChFed won its match (against TPS) to join Economist-SGSEU-1, which drew against Ural. The best scorer and highest performers so far are Fabiano Caruana with 4.0/5 and a 2843 performance, Alexei Shirov with 3.5/4 and a 2833 performance, Vladimir Belov and Andrei Volokitin with the same score and 2831 and 2805 performances respectively.

In the women's section Spartak beat SPb Chess Fed to reach 11.0/12 and AVS beat M.Chigorin CC to get 10.0/12 , with Economist-SGSEU-1, who beat ShSM, to stay a point behind at 9.0/12.

On the penultimate day Economist-SGSEU-1 drew ShSM-64, while Tomsk-400 beat SPbChFed, which meant that Tomsk caught up with ShSM-64 (please don't blame us for these not exactly catchy names). Ural crushed Chigorin and joined Economist-SGSEU-1 in 3/4 position, two match points behind the leaders. On the final day, Friday, ShSM-64 plays SPbChFed, while Tomsk plays Eurasia-Logistic.

GM Fabiano Caruana, of Italy, rated 2649, beat Sergey Tiviakov in round five and Ni Hua in round six, with a total of 5.0/6 points on boards two, three and four for ShSM-64, and a rating performance of 2896. Fabiano is sixteen.

The Women's section is over after seven rounds (the other two groups have one more round each). Spartak, which had been coasting (they won the first four matches, drew the fifth and won the sixth), suffered a big setback by losing in the final round to ShSM (Stefanova and Lahno lost their games, Tatiana Kosintseva won her's), while AVS drew against Economist-SGSEU-1. That left Spartak and AVS tied for first, but Spartak had more board points and therefore took first place:

Portraits from the Women's League

Photo report by WGM Irina Sudakova and Elena Mikheeva

IM Svetlana Matveeva, RUS, 2410, playing for ShSM, performance 2228

The team of M.Chigorin CC, with WIM Olga Ivkina, WFM Elizaveta Bronnikova and
WIM Valentina Solovjova, did not win or draw a single match and scored just 5.5 board points

The Black Sea at Sochi-Dagomys

Spring is in full bloom in this southern-most part of Russia

Video reports by Europe Echecs

Once again we have video reports, produced by GM Robert Fontaine for the French magazine Europe Echecs

Links Official tournament site All available games in PGN: Premier – Higher – Women The games are bing being broadcast live on the official web site and a selection 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.