Garry Kasparov became the winner of the Super Final of the 57th Russian Chess Championship finishing a point and a half ahead of the field

Kasparov wins Russian Chess Championship Super Final

The Super Final of the 57th Russian Chess Championship determined its sure winner, who finished a point and a half ahead of the field. Garry Kasparov once again showed his excellent skills presenting a performance rating of 2855.

The Super Final of the 57th Russian was held in the Festive Hall of the Hotel Rossija not far from the Red Square and Kremlin. Participants were competing for the $125,000 prize sum; $50,000 of this amount was due to the final winner.

The final competition (Round 11) saw such famous players as Garry Kasparov, Alexander Morozevich, Alexander Grischuk (Grishchuk), Peter Svidler, Evgeny Bareev (Bareyev), Alexey Dreev (Dreyev), Vitaly Tseshkovsky, Alexander Motylev, Vladimir Epishin, Artem Timofeev (Timofeyev) and Alexey Korotylev.

According to Chessbase.com, Kasparov was the obvious leader of the Championship. After ten rounds of the 57th Russian Championship Super Final, he was 7.0 points ahead of his rivals from nine games. His closest competitor, Alexander Grischuk, lost his game today and now joins Dreev, who won, at 5.5/9.

There were two games drawn that day. Timofeev vs Epishin game resulted in a Caro-Kann, and the Sicilian Najdorf came up in the game between the two leading players Kasparov (black) and Grischuk. The novelty came from Grischuk on move 15, and about ten moves later he had a clear advantage. Although the young Super-GM pushed hard he was unable to overcome the black defence and the game ended after 39 moves in a draw.