Odessa City Chess Birthday Celebrations
By GM Mikhail Golubev
For the fifth straight year chess events were included in the programme of the celebrations of the Odessa City birthday. Its predecessor, a small Tatar settlement, was founded in 1240. After a period of Lithuanian control it passed into the domain of the Ottoman Sultan in 1529 and remained in Ottoman hands until the Empire’s defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1792. The city of Odessa was founded by a decree of the Empress Catherine the Great on September 2, 1794.
The tournament won by GM Andrey Sumets who defeated IM Sergey Zavgorodniy in the final with a score 2-1. I myself took fourth place.
The blitz was followed by the mega-simul on more than 200 boards, given by Nona Gaprindashvili, Genna Sosonko and the Odessa players Vladimir Tukmakov, Viacheslav Eingorn, Stanislav Savchenko, Andrey Sumets, Natalia Zhukova, Masha Klinova, Volodymyr Eryomenko, IM Stanislav Bogdanovich and myself.
More info here: http://chessportal.od.ua/news.php
This is how you celebrate chess.