Walking the Streets of Moscow

«The coat of arms of Moscow depicts a horseman with a spear in his hand slaying a bas ilisk and is identified with Saint George and the Dragon. The heraldic emblem of Moscow has been an integral part of the coat of arms of Russia since the 16th century.»

Gentlemen - confident, dressed in brand new two-piece suits and ladys - irreproachable, elegant to the smallest details; the Superfinal of the Russian Championship has started in a luxiourous Radisson Slavyanskaya located in Moscow. 

The ceremony is held in the St. George Hall. It's noteworthy that the event gathered a considerable amount of spectators at the very first day of the competition. Well, part of them weren't just spectators. The opening ceremony of the Superfinal was held together with the awarding ceremony of the match "The Russian Team - Russian Spectators."  

 The match itself (rather the game) finished in a draw, but according to the rules the best fans had to be awarded. The best were determined by the amount of the moves guessed by them. So, six lucky burgees were awarded. three of them - Almir Jumaev, Ivan Vysotsky and Alexander Levchenko specially arrived to get their prizes. Well, of course they also came to meet their rivals-idols. 

Perhaps, saying idols was inappropriate... Svidler's friendly, witty and self-critical speech got a condescending answer: "Your play wasn't that bad...", "We decided to bend before the team and agreed to triple repetition"... I guess Svidler would choose the studied opening lines if he had heard all these phrases before the match. 

What is Natalia Pogonina looking at?

Round 1 has started, some of the spectators haven't even took their seats when the first result was already registered - a draw. All the spectators turned their heads towards the transmission of the men's round: well, this kind of draws doesn't happen in the women's competitions. After seeing that all men's boards are continuing playing, the spectators turned their heads back around... No way! Valya Gunina! A draw in 11 moves! With Darya Charochkina! Such a shock...

Let us remind you that according to regulations the participants of the Superfinal are not allowed to agree to a draw before 40 moves are played. The triple repetition was registered on move 11. Can you do a thing like that? Well, if women are fighting for something...

The stereotype breakers left the hall; in three hours the atmosphere of fight was covering the St. George hall.

Anyway, it was a quite strange day. It's quite unusual to see less decisive games in the women's table than in the men's one. 

Tatiana Kosintseva was the only one to win in Round 1. Olga Girya wanted to repeat Tatiana's success, but as it turned out she didn't have enough resources. 

Dmitry Andreikin was first to win in the Men's section. He entered a time trouble with a slight but comfortable advantage and outplayed Vladimir Potkin.  

Everyone expected that Nikita Vitiugov would present the second decisive game. It seemed that Zhenya was going to resign soon, however everything was decided in the same time trouble, when Vitiugov couldn't cope with his nerves and lost the game.

Other games were drawn in a more or less confident way.

This was the first day of Super-chess and the last day of Beatles 42 years ago.