FIRST ROUND: WITHOUT SENSATIONS? PERFECT!
One sensation for the first round of the so-called unpredictable World Cup is not much, you must admit. The favorites of the tournament were winning differently: in a beautiful and elegant way, in a positional fight and showing class. But what was the most important in general – without big problems. Concerning Sergey Movsesian, he perhaps was not just lucky in the pairings. Among many low rating opponents, Yu Yangyi had a potential which occurred to be much higher than his position in the rating list. Sergey, by the way, confirmed this fact after the match as well.
It is amazing how many young chess players have come to Khanty Mansiysk. The Russian Sanan Syugirov, the American Ray Robson and Robert Hess, So Wesley from the Philippines, Indian Negy Parimarjan, Italian Fabiano Caruano, Chinese Hou Yifan. They all are about 15-17 years old. They all have good perspectives. No doubt sooner or later some of them will ask to clear the place at the Olympus of nowadays stars. It seems that FIDE policy on chess popularization in the planet brings its positive results. This can only makes us happy.
It is a pity that the number of women chess representatives was decreased to 2/3. But if the Women’s World Champion – Russian chess player Alexandra Kostenyuk was out of the tournament almost without any fight, another women chess player Hou Yifan was battling hard against experienced Arkady Naiditsch who could qualify to the next round only after winning her in the tie breaks. Let us see how super-Judit will manage. She is already in the second round: her opponent of the first round did not come to Khanty because of sickness.
First round went without sensations? Just perfect! It would be even more interesting to watch the battles of the strongest players in the Center of Art for talented children of North.
So’s rapid play is phenomenal.
“It seems that FIDE policy on chess popularization in the planet brings its positive results. This can only make us happy.” Your words or just quoting another source? In any case I doubt the success of these young players can be attributed to FIDE, as most of them come from countries which already have a rich chess history and/or chess star(s) that have raised chess awareness. I can think of many countries (especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America) where FIDE could really do something to promote the game but mentioning them here would occupy too much space. I’d say chess thrives not because, but in spite of FIDE, and also because of (most of) the well-known players themselves, competent national federation officials (yes, there are some of those!), mand event organizers, and most important of all: the beauty of the game itself!
Yu Yangyi is only 15 years old.
Another comedy turn for the English language.
Not Susan’s words – though the source is not acknowledged, except implicitly by the URL at the end.