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Press release WR Masters
Will Yaroslav Bilenko of the German club Schachfeunde Gerresheim ever play a game against his chess idol Ian Nepomniachtchi? Who knows. The 15-year-old made a start on Sunday at the WR Chess Masters.
For Nepomniachtchi's opponent Wesley So, Bilenko executed the ceremonial opening move: 1.d4. The rest of the Catalan game that followed was still played by the US grandmaster this time.
1.d2-d4: Yaroslav Bilenko executing the first move of the game Wesley So vs. Ian Nepomniachtchi. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
Bilenko was one of six young Ukrainians who attended the fourth round of the super tournament at the invitation of organizer Vadim Rosenstein. They enjoyed the opportunity to meet the super grandmasters and experience them up close. All six come from refugee families who arrived in the Rhineland in the spring of 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
There they soon met Alexander Berelowitsch from Düsseldorfer SK, grandmaster and club colleague of Rosenstein. Berelowitsch had begun offering free chess training in Düsseldorf for children from families of refugees shortly after the war broke out, an initiative Rosenstein supports. "When the WR Chess Masters came into being, the idea of involving the children from Berelowitsch's group was soon added," reports tournament director Sebastian Siebrecht.
Several more ideas were to be added. On each of the tournament days so far, children and young people from the region have been guests at the Hyatt Regency: simultaneous against Vincent Keymer, simultaneous against Zhanyana Abdumalik, chess workshops and tournaments. Finally, Sunday was to belong to the young Ukrainians.
Chess playing children from Ukrainian refugee families occupied the boards before the fourth round of the WR Chess Masters. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
None of them left the venue without gifts and prizes, ChessBase packages and WR Chess merchandise. In addition, there was a main prize to be won: the winner's trophy, of course, but above all the honor of making the opening move at a board for the fourth round of the WR Chess Masters. To determine who deserves this honor, the six played a blitz tournament in the tournament hall of the super grandmasters. Yaroslav Bilenko won with eight points from ten games, ahead of Mykhaylo Nezhyvenko (German Champion U10, 7.5 points) and Mykola Korchynskyi (7.5 points). The other participants: Anhelina Bibliy, Mark Riebienkov, Platon Zakharchenko.
All six experienced the first minutes of the fourth round up close in the tournament hall. Afterwards they looked around a bit behind the scenes of a super tournament. Now it's time to train hard so that they can play a full game against Nepo&Co. soon.
