Ever-Moving Repose

Aleksandra Yuryevna Goryachkina, the first woman ever to take part in the all-gender Russian Chess Championship, concluded her adventure with 4½ points out of 11 (+1 =7 –3), placing 10th-11th. She had probably hoped for more, but as she said afterwards, she really felt exhausted from too much playing on the weeks before the Superfinal. “Aleksandra Yuryevna Goryachkina missed a lot of chances”, two-time Russian Chess Champion Evgeny Yuryevich Tomashevsky told RIA Novosti. “She did fairly well at her début, demonstrating her abilities and skills. In her interview after the final round, she said that lately she played very much and came to Ufa with little preparation. Of course, this may well be a crucial point, because such a competition requires a great amount of energy. And maybe that’s the key that explains her blackouts [...], so I would accept her explanation, that on the long run she did not have enough physical strength”.