Russian Rapid Championship: Ernesto Inarkiev Sole Leader After First Playing Day

The Russian Men and Women Rapid Chess Championships have finished in St. Petersburg.

Today at 14.45 Moscow time, at the hotel "Saint Petersburg", was scheduled the opening of the Russian Men and Women Rapid Championships. The first round started at 15.00. Both competitions will be held simultaneously according to the Swiss system of nine rounds, five of which will be played today, the other four - tomorrow. Time control is 15 +10. Tournament prize fund for men is 320 000 rubles, for women - 180 000.

In St Petersburg, the tournaments for the Russian rapid championship have ended. Both men's and women's events had the same feature: the rating favourites failed to shine and some did very poorly. For example, the second rated Vladimir Malakhov (2700) finished in 30th place and lost 41.2 rating points. Top seed Ildar Khairullin withdrew after 5 rounds, for reasons that so far are unknown to us. Boris Grachev was rated 6th but finished 22nd (losing 23.6 rating points).

The Russian Chess Federation website published the names of 16 participants of the Russian Cup which will be held from December 2-12 in Khanty-Mansiysk. The following players will compete: Ernesto Inarkiev, Evgeny Romanov, Igor Kovalenko, Dmitry Kokarev, Dmitry Bocharov, Artem Timofeev, Sergey Grigorianz, Vladimir Onischuk, Bartosz Socko, Ildar Khairullin, Pavel Maletin, Artur Gabrielian, Boris Savchenko, Igor Lysyj, Denis Khismatulin and Dmitry Jakovenko.

Botvinnik Memorial is going to take place in Saint-Petersburg quite soon, but this year it is going to happen in the same time with the chess Olympiad in Istanbul (August 24 – September 2). The official site contains a list of registered participants and it’s possible to say that this year the festival will become one of the strongest Russian Swiss events.

The World Rapid Championship has started in Dubai. There are overall 113 participants. You can check the result of Round 1 here. In the first round Carlsen beat Georgiev, Caruana was stronger than Sokolov I, Nakamura lost against Iturrizaga, Aronian was defeated by Ganguly. Overall five rounds will be played today.

The top game in the European Championship in Gjakova has ended with Inarkiev winning as Black against David Navara.

Photo - twitter.com/ECUonline

At 1 p.m. Moscow time started the games of the second round of the Russian Championship Top League in Yekaterinburg. Live games