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18.07.2006 ALEXANDER KENTLER. CROSSROADS: GIRLISH MESS
     Thirty-two chessplayers, including twelve grandmasters, struggled for five qualifying spots to the Russian Superfinal at the women’s Higher league tournament in Orel. This tournament turned out to be really strong. However, rating-leaders played poorly. Only 21-year-old Ekaterina Korbut from Saint Petersburg managed to advance to the Russian Superfinal (she took the fifth place). Ekaterina Korbut and 22-year-old Maria Komiagina from Arkhangelsk seemed to be the veterans among the laureates. Valentina Gunina (Murmansk) became gold medal winner. She is only 17 years old but she took part in the last year’s Superfinal. Elena Tairova (Moscow) and Anastasia Bodnaruk (Saint Petersburg) are both 14 years old.
     It is possible that this success doesn’t let us say that these chessplayers are bright future of Russian chess, though each of them has a large amount of different medals (including gold medals) on the World and European championships. However, when several young chessplayers suddenly shoot ahead, one can speak about the tendency.
     One can remember different talks (articles, interviews) about the fact that having seen the lack of prospects of the older chessplayers, the present leaders of Russian junior chess decided to bend every effort to the development of chessplayers that are ten or twelve years old. Is that really the case and our best children have no future? I don’t think so. Probably, there are no superstars in Russia like 12-year-old Hou Yifan and 16-year-old Magnus Carlsen. But it is impossible to prepare great chessplayers in the context of some group. We speak about those who need the support of the State and the federation and about those who can become elite chessplayers because of their talent and hard work.
      I hope that something similar to the success of our young chessplayers can take place at the men’s Higher league tournament in Tomsk. However, I hope that at least two chessplayers that are younger than 20 years old will advance to the Russian Superfinal.
      I have read the regulations of Russian championships 2006 attentively. The differences between the men’s and the women’s competitions are striking indeed. You can judge yourselves:
    Three winners of the last year’s Russian championship, three chessplayers who have the highest rating on January 1, 2006 and five winners of the Higher league advance to the women’s Superfinal. Moreover, the president of Russian Chess Federation also defines the chessplayer who will take part in the Superfinal.
    Three winners of the last year’s Russian championship, seven winners of the Higher league and two chessplayers according to the decision of the leaders of RCF advance to the men’s Superfinal.
     As long as all Russian competitions are represented in the same document, several questions emerge. First of all, what is the difference between the leaders of RCF and its president? Why do different instances determine the participants of the competitions that are equal to each other? 
     Now let’s draw attention to the other problem. World championship medal-winners Galliamova and Matveeva and Nadezhda Kosintseva, who took the fourth place in the previous Russian championship, have the best rating among those who were not medal winners of Russian Superfinal in 2005.  Is it possible that the classical World champion Vladimir Kramnik and bronze medal-winner of the world championship Petr Svidler have to wait for the favor of RCF in order to play in the Superfinal? I guess that it is right to allow the outstanding chessplayers (for example, those who have more than 2700 rating points) to play in the Superfinal without the selection. If they refuse to take part in this tournament one will be able to invite the chessplayers who participated in the Higher league and finished behind those who advanced to the Superfinal (It seems to me that it is quite enough to admit five winners to the Superfinal as it is in the women’s Higher league). Look through the list of chessplayers admitted to the participation in the Russian men’s Higher league tournament in Tomsk. The presence of Petr Svidler and the absence of Vladimir Kramnik are really strange. It is also clear that neither Svidler, nor Kramnik will play in this tournament.
     Let’ return to the girls. One has been recently resolving the question about the admission of Anastasia Bodnaruk to the final of Saint Petersburg women’s championship. She took the fifth place in the last year’s championship but she rejected the participation in this year’s selection. Although there were few chessplayers in the final (only ten chessplayers played), most of them voted against Bodnaruk’s participation. It is not surprising because her father Mikhail Ivanovich has already plagued everyone with the permanent activity for the sake of his daughter. But it is necessary to give him his due: Anastasia looks like to be a very talented girl! Now she works with grandmaster Sergey Ionov. I hope that their alliance will last for a long time!


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