Things heat up in the Russian Superfinals

Russian Chess Championship Superfinal Rounds 1 and 2

The 68th Men's Russian Chess Championship and the 65th Women's Russian Chess Championship is played in Chita from 9. to 21. August. The competition is held by the Russian Chess Federation, the Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation and the Zabaykalsky Krai Chess Federation, with support from the government of the Zabaykalsky Krai. The competition partners are Norilsk Nickel and the Baikalsk Mining Company.

Round 2 (10. August 2015)     Khismatullin, Denis - Tomashevsky, Evgeny 0-1

The Governor of the Zabaykalsky Krai, President of the regional chess federation Konstantin Ilkovsky made the symbolical first move in the game between the 12th Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk (Moscow) and Grandmaster Anastasia Bodnaruk (St. Petersburg).

The first move of the first round

The Men's Tournament

Taking it easy: Peter Svidler (left), Alexander Motylev (opposite Svidler) and Mark Gluhovsky (standing).

The only winner in the men's tournament was Sergey Karjakin, who defeated Denis Khismatullin in a hard-fought battle.

Sergey Karjakin shows his win at the press conference.

The second round saw more action. Three games were drawn, two were won by Black, and in one game White had the better of it. Sagar Shah annotates the three decided games.

Nikita Vitiugov scored a fine win in a theoretically interesting game.

Nikita Vitiugov shows the finer points of his strategy. Evgenij Miroshnichenko listens.

After his loss against Karjakin in round one Denis Khismatullin had White in round two and was too ambitious - against Evgeny Tomashevsky, who is famous for his solid style, this backfired.

Evgeny Tomashevsky at the press conference

Alexander Motylev blundered in a better position against Ildar Khairullin.

Alexander Motylev (left) tries to explain what went wrong.

Standings after two rounds

Women

In the women's tournament, the history of the 2014 Superfinal's first round repeated itself: Russian Champion Valentina Gunina lost as White to Alexandra Goriachkina.

Valentina Gunina before her first round game

Aleksandra Goryachkina before her game against Gunina

The women's tournament

Alexandra Kosteniuk started with two draws

In the second round four games were decided. Olga Girya and Aleksandra Goryachkina both won for the second time in a row and now lead the field. Sagar Shah has two highlights.

Anastasia Savina profited from an inaccuracy by Natalija Pogonina in a well-known position of the King's Indian with h3, allowing her to demonstrate the power of the King's Indian bishop on g7.

The game between Marina Guseva and Olga Girya was a tense affair, in which Girya finally had the better of it.

Olga Girya

Standings after two rounds

Photos: Vladimir Barsky and Eteri Kublashvili

Links Official tournament site Games in PGN (Men) Games in PGN (Women) The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 13 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.