2012 Chess Olympiad
Announcement | September 28, 2011 13:33

Ponomariov, Morozevich, Leko to play in new Russian tournament

Today the Russian Chess Federation announced a new super-strong tournament to be held October 7-20 in Saratov. It's called the 'Governor's Cup of the Saratov region' and it will be a 12-player round robin with Evgeny Tomashevsky, Dmitry Andreikin, Evgeny Alekseev, Alexander Morozevich, Nikita Vitiugov (all Russia), Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexander Moiseenko, Pavel Eljanov (all Ukraine), Alexei Shirov (Spain), Ni Hua (China), Peter Leko (Hungary) and Michael Roiz (Israel).

The venue will be the auditorium of the Saratov State Socio-Economic University. The time control will be 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and then 30 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment from move 1. Games are played from October 8th till 19th with one rest day on the 14th. Prize money hasn't been disclosed yet.

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Author: Editors

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2012 Chess Olympiad

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Thomas's picture

This was already mentioned during the World Cup, first by Leko ("now [after his first-round loss] I have more time to prepare for Saratov"), then by Tomashevsky. It celebrates the 80th anniversary of the university, so it's probably a one-time event rather than a regular addition to the tournament calendar. Half of the field currently plays for Ekonomist SGSEU Saratov at the European Club Cup (is SGSEU the Russian acronym for the university?).

Anyway, great opportunity for several players who hardly get prestigious invitations - but might well now be sitting in Vallejo's chair if they were Spanish or Brazilian rather than Russian.

Slight nitpicking: Shouldn't Shirov also be mentioned in the title?

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