Moscow

Grandmaster Evgeny Vorobiov tells about the 81th Moscow championship and about himself
In round 1 I played against a strong master Yaroslav Ulko. It seemed to me that the tournament was over when it even had not started yet. I lost game one with white pieces, having demonstrated an exceptionally weak play. It was extremely offensive for me. Yaroslav, despite being a strong player, is not a chess professional while I am trying to make the chess my profession. In game 2 I chose the correct strategy which was to shut the position in the center (1.d4 c5 2.d5 e5) and to entangle a rather prolonged struggle while avoiding the exchanges. Then the tie-break came and again I lost game one… It all was decided in blitz games when White had 5 minutes per game and was obliged to win and Black had 4 minutes per game, but he could afford making a draw. I chose white pieces confidently.
In the quarter final I was a little bit lucky - instead of playing against grandmaster Kobalia I had to play against his offender, master Bator Sambuev. Then I had to play against my friend Evgeny Naer. I wanted to take revenge for the defeat last year very much but I failed. It was an equal struggle but I made a horrible mistake in the rapid phase by having rejected the draw offer. Then I began playing for the time and was punished appropriately. Generally, taking into account the tournament schedule, me and Evgeny achieved maximum possible in this competition by having obtained the first and the third prizes. Yet, for the third prize, I had to play against grandmaster Sergei Shipov who was considered an obvious favorite in this tournament. However I felt myself quite confidently, some ‘second breath’ had opened in me. And Sergei seemed quite disappointed since he obtained two rather promising positions in the semi-final and it was very unpleasant for him to play for the third place afterwards…
Again it all was decided by blitz. Interesting, that they even had no necessity to draw the lots because our interests coincided perfectly - I wanted to play with white pieces and Sergei wanted to play with black ones. Before the game stated, I posed a task for myself which was to qualify for the Russia championship final. The rumors exist that it is going to be very impressive in its composition this year. I fulfilled that task successfully.