Chess Weekly

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[by GM P.Svidler]
We did it quite confidently in the first two rounds, but in round 3 we had to play against the Belarus Vesnianka. We won by 5-1, at that Adams and I drawn our games against brothers Zhigalko - the elder one is 17 and the younger 14 years old. They played confidently for the rest of competition, only in the last round the elder brother lost to Dreev. Not prime guys, indeed.
In round 4 we beat the Polish Polonia thanks to efforts of our lower boards. We met Ladia in round 5, we needed desperately to win this match but, alas, Vallejo got into a time pressure, got confused and survived by a miracle. The final score of the match was 3-3.
In the last but one round (definitely, they strove to finish us off!) our opponent was a firm Tomsk-Yukos featuring Khalifman and Morozevich. Ladia played against the Beer-Sheba team, where Alexander Huzman plays successfully for many years on board 1. Once he beat me in a similar competition - it took him 22 moves… He has also been winning games against Khalifman and Adams.
Then a miracle happened. Kasparov blundered a tactical strike, while playing in a better position against Huzman. Rublevsky loses to Avrukh and the match results in a draw! Meanwhile, we had draws on our first two boards, the next three boards won. On the last board, Fressinet managed to perform a rare tactical trick in a position difficult for him.