Chess - The Scotsman 18/04/2012

FORMER champions Tomsk-400 rolled back the years to be the surprise winners of the 19th Russian Team Championship in Sochi, snatching the title by the narrowest of margins at the end of a very dramatic final round on Sunday.

Tomsk (Sergey Karjakin, Ruslan Ponomariov …) defeated Polytechnic Nizhny Tagil (led by Dmitry Kokarev) 4-2 on Sunday while the leaders, St Petersburg (Peter Svidler, Nikita Vitugov, Lenier Dominguez), drew 3-3 with top seeds and holders ShSM-64 Moscow (Fabiano Caruana, Wang Hao, Peter Leko…).

When the dust settled, Tomsk and St Petersburg were tied at the top on 11/14 match points, with Tomsk clinching the title by virtue of having the better tie break decider of 27/42 game points to St Petersburg’s 25.5. ShSM-64 took third place on 10 (28) ahead of Economist Saratov (Alexander Morozevich, Evgeny Tomashevsky ...) 10 (24.5).

Top board Karjakin proved to be the inspirational force in leading his team to victory, and one that went very much against the odds against much stronger squads. He turned in an unbeaten score of 5.5/7 and 2837 performance (moving him up two places in the world ranking to reclaim the No 6 spot), and this proved to be the crucial difference in deciding the outcome in one of the world’s strongest national team championships.

Karjakin, 22, still holds the record as the youngest player (at 12 years and seven months) to become a grandmaster – a record that many in the game believe will never be broken.

S Karjakin - P Tregubov

Russian Team Ch., (2)

Sicilian Defence, Kan variation

1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 e6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nc6 5 Nc3 Qc7 6 Be3 a6 7 Qd2 Nf6 8 0–0–0 Bb4 9 f3 Na5 10 Kb1 Bxc3 11 Qxc3 Qxc3 12 bxc3 d5 13 e5 Nd7 14 f4 b5 15 Nb3 Nc4 16 Bd4 Bb7 17 Bd3 Rc8 18 g4 Ncb6 19 Kc1 0–0 20 Rhe1 Na4 21 Re3 Rc7 22 Rf1 Rfc8 23 f5! Nxc3 24 Bxc3 Rxc3 25 fxe6 fxe6 26 Nd4 g6 27 Kd2 b4 28 Rf4 Nc5 29 Ref3 Ra3 30 Rf7 Rxa2 31 Re7 Ne4+ 32 Ke3 Ra1 33 Rxb7 Re1+ 34 Ne2 a5 35 Rff7 1–0