Chessville News - GMs Kosteniuk & Ponomariov Win - 2005 Golden Blitz Tournament in Moscow

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GM Alexandra Kosteniuk Wins the
2005 Golden Blitz Tournament in Moscow

(The photos in this report were taken on September 13 and 14, 2005, during the Golden Blitz tournament in Moscow, organized by VV Profi, IGP and the ACP. All photos and text by Pufichek, (c) www.kosteniuk.com. You can purchase any autographed photo - more info here.)

Alexandra Kosteniuk won convincingly the Golden Blitz tournament in Moscow, by defeating in the semi-finals ex-world champion Zhu Chen 2-0 and in the finals Almira Skripchenko 2-0. In the men's competition Ponomariov beat Bareev in the finals.

The event saw two very strong knockout blitz tournaments, a men's event with 8 players, and a women's event with 4 participants. The following chess stars took part: A.Grischuk, E.Bareev, A.Motylev, P.Tregubov (all – Russia), N.Short (UK), R.Ponomariov (Ukraine), V.Tkachiev (France), Y.Pelletier (Switzerland), and among the women were A.Kosteniuk (Russia), Zhu Chen (China), A Skripchenko (France), I.Krush (USA).

The event was held at the "Jazz Town Casino" in the centre of Moscow and broadcasted by the Russian TV channel "NTV+Sport". The tournament was sponsored by "IGP" (International Games Promotion) and organized by "V&V Profi", in association with the ACP.

The matches consisted of two five-minutes blitzes. In case of an even score there would have been an additional drawing procedure to decide the colors for the tie-break game, with 4 minutes given to White and 3 minutes given to Black. In case of a draw Black goes to the next round.

Here are a few more pictures from the event:

The first semi-final was Kosteniuk - Zhu Chen. Alexandra won 2 - 0, a revenge from the final of the World Chess Championship 2001 in Moscow.

Zhu Chen explains to TV why she lost to Alexandra.

Left to right: Nigel Short, Zhu Chen,
Yannick Pelletier, Svetlana Matveeva and Alexandra Kosteniuk.

Alexandra and Almira are true friends,
they are happy they both won their semi-finals and qualified for the final.

Alexandra is confident before the second game as she won the first one convincingly against Almira.

Ponomariov played very well and won his match.

The big winners of the Golden Blitz: Ruslan Ponomariov and Alexandra Kosteniuk.

You can find more news of the event on the following pages: http://www.kosteniuk.com/

and the official announcement: http://www.chess-players.org/eng/news/viewarticle.html?id=426

and in Russian here: http://vvprofi.ru/news.php

A complete photo album of the event is here: http://www.kosteniuk.com/albums/goldenblitz/goldenblitz05.html

All photos and text by Pufichek, (c) www.kosteniuk.com

You can purchase any autographed photo ($6 photo 10x15 cm, $36 photo 20x30 cm) from this or practically any album, by visiting her shop!. You can mention what you'd like Alexandra to sign on the photo (reasonable requests please) by sending an email to to her. Please allow time for individual printing/signing/shipping. You can also buy a high-resolution (more than 1 MB) picture by email for $9. Please don't forget to mention exact Album name and Photo Name. Note: 50% of all profits of autographed photos go to Alexandra's Chess Fund, in which she helps to promote chess in the world, principally to children. Thanks for your support!

Visit Alexandra's personal page right here at Chessville!

Click here or on the picture to the right to visit
GM Kosteniuk's personal web site!