An encounter with grandmaster

Once Rafael Vaganian and Anatoly Karpov were rivals, but at the same time remained friends. Besides, both are great friends of Ural State University of Economics and honored guests of the Ural Queen rapid chess championship, which is held annually as part of the Eurasian Economic Youth Forum.

“A year ago, during the XII EEYF, journalists contacted us. They wished to play chess, they wanted it to be a friendly match with a skilled player being at least a grandmaster,” USUE Rector Yakov Silin recalled. “Now there is such an opportunity.”

The chess was played simultaneously on ten boards. The participants of the media forum (media editors-in-chief) were joined by student - members of the USUE chess team. The youngest participant, Yesenia Belyakova, recently turned 10 years old. However, by this age, the girl is already a third-class junior chess player. In this game, Yesenia held out longer than some adults.

Rafael Vaganian played White. Ten minutes later, the number of eliminated players having Black skyrocketed. The first opponent lost the king in the thirty-third minute of the play. And moving forward, Vaganian’s rivals dropped out one by one. Three players held out the longest against the grandmaster.

Anna Kromskaya, a first-year student of the USUE Institute of Digital Management Technologies and Information Security, built up a competent defense, which turned out to be not so easy to break. For a long time, the number of eliminated white pieces near her board even exceeded the number of black ones. But in the end, Rafael Vaganian cut through the defense in the center, separating the king from its last defenders.

Ikrom Avalboev, deputy head of the “Presidential Pool” center under the National News Agency of Uzbekistan, arranged a good exchange of pieces and “hid” the king for a long time, but in the end, he was forced to surrender.

Matvey Prytkov, a third-year student of the USUE Institute of Digital Management Technologies and Information Security, was the longest-held out against the grandmaster. He even tried to arrange a raid with his queen at the rear of the opponent. But after losing this piece, it forced him to retreat.

“Ten boards at the same time are not all that difficult. If they were twenty, I could have made a mistake somewhere and lost.” grandmaster Rafael Vaganian shared his impressions of the play. “However, there were some really strong opponents. It’s good that the university pays such attention to chess. Chess trains the mind of students, as you could see.”

Nobody managed to beat Rafael Vaganian. As the participants said, it is not a shame to lose to a grandmaster, it is an honor to play against him. The players, who were not afraid to challenge the winner of the World Chess Olympiads, were presented with chess boards signed by the grandmaster. Besides, after the play, everyone took part in an autograph signing session.