Past Caissa

In the Candidates Matches in Kazan, Russian grandmasters dropped out of the fight for the chess crown

On the day when the last bell rang for Russian schoolchildren, Boris Gelfand, a graduate of the Soviet chess school, won the Candidates' Competition in Kazan and won the right to face Indian World Champion Viswanathan in a match...

On the day when the last bell rang for Russian schoolchildren, Boris Gelfand, a graduate of the Soviet chess school, won the Candidates' Competition in Kazan and won the right to face Indian world champion Viswanathan Anand in a match.

The chess goddess Kaissa turned out to be supportive of the oldest of the eight applicants. 42-year-old grandmaster Gelfand once played for the national team of the USSR and Belarus, and moved to Israel 13 years ago. Perhaps, if now, after a major sporting success, he wanted to visit his native Minsk, he would hardly have been met with bread and salt: there were just interruptions in these products due to the collapse of the Belarusian ruble.

The success of Boris Gelfand is great, but, frankly speaking, not convincing. In the old days, when Mikhail Tal won the Candidates Competition, everyone clearly saw that there was no one brighter than him. When Boris Spassky won, there was no doubt that he was the strongest. Well, Robert Fischer won three Candidates matches with a total score of 18.5:2.5 and, becoming the undisputed champion in the future, actually asked his opponents not to bother him anymore.

The matches in Kazan, from the quarter-final to the final, upset chess fans with an exorbitant number of draws. Of the 30 classical games played here by eight grandmasters, 27 ended in a draw. This is explained by the fact that everyone plays equally well, although it looks more like they play equally cautiously. In short matches of four to six games, no one will risk and succumb to temptation, even if the medal "For capturing a pawn" is approved.

To determine the winners in Kazan every now and then I had to resort to games with a shortened time control and even blitz (it's good that with a tie it didn't come to weighing the opponents).

In the final, however, there was no tie-break. Five games between Boris Gelfand and Russian grandmaster Alexander Grischuk ended in a draw, and Gelfand won the sixth and last one. As a result, the stubborn and resourceful Grischuk, who defeated our second participant, ex-world champion Vladimir Kramnik, in the semi-finals, dropped out of the fight. Russia again did not use the opportunity to return the chess crown, although it did not lack talents and still can give birth to its own Platons and quick-witted Newtons. Quick minds - this is for blitz.

Attempts to make chess competitions more spectacular fail. On the sidelines of the Kazan matches, they again started talking about the draw death of classical chess. However, this death is rather clinical, and the chess pieces on the board are still recovering and creaking. Chess, as you know, is inexhaustible. Only the purses of sponsors would remain inexhaustible.