19.04.2006
ALEXANDER KENTLER. CROSSROADS
Yesterday the seventh European Championship in Turkey came to the end. At first, the attempt to get to know the results of the tiebreaks seemed to be futile. There was no information even at the official websites. But the video broadcast helped us indeed. Three beautiful women – three medal winners of the women’s championship - came at the podium between the impassioned dances of the Turkish top strings. Lilit Mkrtchian became third, Теа Bosboom-Lanchava took the second place and Ekaterina Atalik became the gold medal winner. Then three serious men, who looked like officials, came at the awarding ceremony in the following order: Kiril Georgiev was third, Vassily Ivanchuk came off second, and Zdenko Kožul took the first place. Vassily turned out to be the youngest among these chessplayers. The champion is forty years old and Bulgarian celebrated this jubilee last year.
What does it mean? The veterans don’t grow old, do they? Partly it is the truth. The championships of the Old World were not very popular before. But the main thing is that now, when a half of qualifying spots to the World Cup is taken, these competitions are not of interest neither of elite players, nor prodigious children. Thirteen chessplayers of the top hundred came to Kusadasi. Indefatigable Vassily Ivanchuk (the seventh player in the Elo rating list), Kiril Georgiev (the twenty sixth player) and Arkadij Naiditsch, who struggled with Georgiev for the third place, were rating favorites. Alexander Moiseenko is the last European in the first half of the top hundred. Other nine players range from the 59th to the 96th. It is reasonable that young geniuses (Karjakin, Сarlsen, etc.) also ignored this tournament.
Kožul became the seventh champion in the history of these competitions. Tregubov (now he is the head of ACP), Sutovsky, Macieja, Azmaiparashvili, Ivanchuk and Nisipeanu were the European champions in previous years.
The chess world expects the important events of May: M-Tel Masters in Sofia, Chess Olympiad in Turin and the election of the president of FIDE. During a short break in the chain of tournaments one speaks more about the chess because of its eminent place in pavilions.
Misha Savinov’s material and photographic report about the exhibition of works of the American painter Lisa Lidow have been published on our website (in Russian). Anatoly Karpov opened this exhibition. The twelfth world champion also answered a couple of questions of our reporter.
At the same time, the exhibition “Chess collection” was opened in Moscow gallery of Tatintsian. One of the painters (Herst) made gallipots with the medicines and wrote on them different names of chess pieces with the descriptions of their effect. Chapman brothers used the theme of racialism. The characters are white and black pieces moderately dressed. Katellan decided to play for the good (Jeanne D’Arc, Ciccolina and even Lenin) against the evil (Hitler, Stalin). There were also many other magnificent works.
The exhibition, which is devoted to the birthday of the salon “The fifth house”, is open in Zhukovsky. The exposition on chess subjects is presented at it. It was informed by the organizers that the idea of this exhibition occurred because of the success of Pechonkin’s painting “Squares like circles right in front of”. The painters used the legends about the chess and the philosophy of this ancient game for the creation of their works.
Let’s return to Saint Petersburg. The exhibition “Alphabet, butterflies and chess” was opened in Nabokov museum. It is devoted to the 107th anniversary of the famous writer. Unfortunately, there was no time to visit it.
Chess is so attractive that it gives inspiration for the creative work both for those who like and understand it and for those who has a superficial idea of it.
