Russian Team Cup
Report by ChessToday.net
The tournament in the Premier League was won by the Tomsk-400 team. (GMs Jakovenko, Timofeev, Inarkiev, Tiviakov, Tkachiev, Amonatov and the reserve player Khismatullin).
Everything was decided in the final round 7:
Tomsk400 – Eurasia-Logistic: 3½-2½
Tomsk400 played without their leader Jakovenko, and achieved a victory against Eurasia only by a minimal margin. On the 5th board Amonatov (Tomsk) defeated Rychagov.
Moscow64 – St Petersburg Fed: 2½-3½
The St-Petersburg federation team, which already had lost chances for the highest places, prevented Moscow from taking the gold medals.
In the only decisive game of that match, Efimenko won against B.Savchenko on last board. The Moscow team for some reason played without their most successful player, Fabiano Caruana who scored 5/6 on 3rd board.
TPS – Ural: 1½-4½
A super team Ural won for the second time, and took the bronze medals, at least.
Chigorin CC – Economist1: 1-5
The Chigorin Club team lost all their matches.
Final Standings:
1. Tomsk400 – 11 (23½)
2. Moscow64 – 9 (24½)
3. Ural – 9 (24)
4. Economist1 – 9 (23½)
5. St Petersburg Fed – 8 (23)
6. TPS – 6 (20½)
7. Eurasia-Logistic – 4 (19½)
8. Chigorin CC – 0 (9½).
Teams, which finished 1-4, have qualified to the 2009 European Club Cup.
The Crosstable shows the secret of team Tomsk success. They made not as many individual points as some other teams, but four of their five team victories were achieved by a minimal margin! (And only against Chigorin CC they won with 4½-1½).
Best Performances:
Caruana (Moscow) 2896 (6/7)
Grachev (Moscow) 2821 (4/5)
Shirov (Ural) 2809 (5/7)
I though Caruana is American? How can he play for a Russian team?
For what it’s worth, Caruana is now representing Italy. As far as playing in the Russian league is concerned: just like Anand and others play for Baden-Baden in the first German chess league, many South Americans play in European soccer leagues, Dirk Nowitzky plays in the US basketball league, … .
It’s not normal that the total number of individual victories per team is not taken into account .
Quite unfair for some team in the list that finished with 9 points