During the USSR’s golden decades of chess supremacy the annual Soviet championship was a major event keenly followed by players worldwide. Its winners included the legends Mikhail Botvinnik, Boris Spassky, Mikhail Tal, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov. It often lasted a month and up to 20 rounds and it was played before packed audiences in Moscow, Leningrad or Kiev. Combative, tactical games, opening novelties and creative ideas abounded.
This week’s 2015 Russian championship provided a low-key contrast. The country’s only top-10 grandmasters, Vlad Kramnik and Alex Grischuk, were absent, two-thirds of the games were drawn and the venue was the distant town of Chita in Siberia, close to the Chinese border. Peter Svidler, seven times champion, was among the favourites but he was crushed early in this week’s puzzle and never recovered, winning only one game.
Yet the event still gave hope to Russian fans who see their once all-conquering GMs outpaced by the world champions Magnus Carlsen and Vishy Anand, the ambitious Americans and the young Chinese.
The winner, Evgeny Tomashevsky, 28, is known as ‘The Professor’ due to his studious looks, strategic playing style, good education and spectacles. Tomashevsky is the world No13 and his strong 2015 results show he is still advancing. Sergey Karjakin was half a point behind and the 25-year-old, who was the youngest ever GM at 12, has shown his class by two victories in Norway ahead of Carlsen, plus his second to Anand in the 2014 candidates.
Even more significant was Vladislav Artemiev, only 17, in joint fourth place. The Omsk teenager is emerging as the world’s most promising junior next to China’s Wei Yi. Final scores were Tomashevsky 7.5/11, Karjakin 7, Nikita Vitiugov 6.5, Artemiev and three others 5.5.
Vitiugov won a lively attacking game from an interesting opening. He passed up on the 4 e4 Marshall Gambit, whose main line dxe4 5 Nxe4 Bb4+ 6 Bd2 Qxd4 7 Bxb4 Qxe4+ is fierce and complex. Why? Vitiugov had lost a game as White in the 2014 world teams whereas the US champion Hikaru Nakamura has shown that 4 e4 Bb4! is quite playable.
So Vitiugov provoked complications in a different way, by 7 Bd3 rather than the routine 7 Nf3 and inviting Black to counter 7...e5. The position is sharp, and Bukavshin’s 12...Qa5+? (c5!) lost the plot after 13 b4!
Black then panicked at the threats to his king and 17..g6? (Re8! 18 d5 Bf8 is more resilient) led to 19 f5! and 20 Qc1! with crushing threats. Vitiugov could even afford to miss or bypass the tactic 24 Rxb7! Bxb7 25 Qxg5 as what he played led to mate.
Nikita Vitiugov v Ivan Bukavshin
1 d4 d5 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 c6 4 e3!? Nf6 5 b3 Bd6 6 Bb2 O-O 7 Bd3!? e5 8 dxe5 Bxe5 9 Nf3 Bg4 10 Qc2 Bxf3 11 gxf3 d4 12 Ne2 Qa5+? 13 b4! Qxb4+ 14 Kf1 c5 15 f4 Bd6 16 exd4 Nbd7 17 Rg1 g6?18 Rb1 Qa5 19 f5! g5 20 Qc1! Kh8 21 dxc5 Be7 22 Bd4 Qc7 23 Be4 Rab8 24 Nc3?! h6 25 Nd5 Qd8 26 h4 Bxc5 27 hxg5 Bxd4 28 gxf6 1-0
The Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis, the second event of the 2015 Grand Tour, has its first round on Sunday (7pm BST start). Games are free and live online, with move by move grandmaster and computer commentaries, so thousands of fans will be watching to see if Magnus Carlsen can recover from his disaster at Stavanger last month.
3404 1...Qa2+ 2 Kc1 Qa1+! 3 Bxa1 Rxa1+ 4 Kb2 Nc4/d3 mate. Black could also play 2...Qxb2+!
