64 charge ahead

Not so long ago Gelfand and Karjakin were battling it out for a place in the Final of the World Cup. Now they are on the same team steering ShSM-64 to a convincing lead in the Russian Team Championships.

The leading three teams all won with the 64-Magazine team dominating their opponents 5-1. It was indeed another good day for ShSM-64 whose impressive score means they are ahead on game points as well as match points.

St.Petersburg's 3.5-2.5 included a delightful board one victory of Ivanchuk over Grischuk (Subscribers, see the 'Notable Games' section for a full analysis).

Pre-round rankingTeam (White on odds)ResultPre-round rankingTeam
3Economist-SGSEU-15.5-0.510BelGU
6Chigorin Chess Club1-51ShSM-64
2SPb Chess Fed3.5-2.54Yugra
9Economist-SGSEU-22-45Ural
7Tomsk-4003.5-2.58Etude-Contact

Eljanov (Economist 1) won his fifth game of the event and European Champion Nepomniachtchi (Ural) notched up a black win. In the latter match Khenkin (Etude) continues his good form with a win over Ponomariov (Tomsk).

Here are the standings after round 6. There were some minor changes in the middle but the top three and bottom three remained as they were.

RankingTeamELO averageMatch pointsGame pointsTop board
1ShSM-6427001328.5Boris Gelfand 2750
2SPb Chess Fed27001126.5Vasily Ivanchuk 2748
3Economist-SGSEU-127041027Wang Yue 2749
4Ural2618822.5Ian Nepomniachtchi 2656
5Yugra2689822Alexander Grischuk 2756
6Tomsk-4002687723Ruslan Ponomariov 2737
7Chigorin Chess Club2584617Ildar Khairullin 2617
8Etude-Contact2555418.5Igor Khenkin 2597
9Economist-SGSEU-22548315Alexander Kovchan 2595
10BelGU2493010Alexander Ivanov 2481

In each of the top three teams, all eight players have been used and everyone has at least 50%. The individual scores can be seen below.

ShSm-64 (The legendary 64-magazine team

NameCountryRatingWorld rankingScore
Boris GelfandISR275093/5
Sergey KarjakinRUS2725214/5
Wang HaoCHN2715253/5
Fabiano CaruanaITA2680523.5/6
Boris GrachevRUS2667602.5/5
Alexander RiazantsevRUS2660715/6
Evgeniy NajerRUS2665654.5/6
Boris SavchenkoRUS2652833/4

SPb (St.Petersburg) Chess federation

NameCountryRatingWorld rankingScore
Vasily IvanchukUKR2748113/6
Peter SvidlerRUS275083.5/6
Nikita VitiugovRUS2710283.5/6
Sergei MovsesianSVK2709294.5/6
Vadim ZvjagintsevRUS26431013/5
Zahar EfimenkoUKR26401054.5/6
Konstantin SakaevRUS26351182/4
Vasily YemelinRUS25762362.5/3

Economist- SGSEu-1 (Saratov in Southern Russia, actual European champions)

NameCountryRatingWorld ranking
Wang YueCHN2749102/4
Pavel EljanovUKR2736165/7
Evgeny TomashevskvyRUS2701362.5/5
Evgeny AlekseevRUS2700374/7
Ni HuaCHN2667623/5
Alexander MoiseenkoUKR2668594/5
Michael RoizISR2652863.5/5
Dmitry AndreikinRUS2645963/4

Riazantsev's 5/6 is the best score overall.

Alexander Riazantsev, 5/6 so far.@Chessbase

On board one Nepomniachtchi has 4.5/7 and Khenkin 4/6 playing for lower-ranked teams.

Eljanov's 5/7 on boards one and two is also notable.

To finish with here are the Women's champions.

St.Petersburg ladies team are this year's champions.

For more information official tournament site

It will help to be able to read Russian as the English version is out-of-date!


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