Aeroflot open, 5th round.

It is late evening here. I am on my way back home to Saint-Petersburg. I am sitting in the fastest train "Sapsan" for which it takes only 4 hours to cover the 700km distance from Moscow to Saint-Petersburg. They even have wi-fi here, but I am not sure it will be fast enough to publish the pictures. If not, then I ll publish them later. Anyway I`ll do it, because today I`ve spent about 2 hours in the hotel Cosmos and took a lot of pictures from the 5th round of the tournament. I wish I could`ve stayed more. I`d like to make better reports – while making the first ones, I realised how I can improve them. There are people, with whom I wish I could have chatted more. What to do, vacation is over. So this is my last report on Aeroflot open.

The weather is getting colder. Some chessplayers even started to disappear. It seems suspicious...

Ok, let us get to the pictures:

GM Anton Korobov (Ukraine)

GM Maxim Rodshtein (Israel)

GM Evgeny Alexeev (Russia) - GM Abhijeet Gupta (India) ½-½

GM Adhiban Baskaran (India) - GM Ian Nepomniachtchi (Russia). What a pose!

One of the most cheerful GMs Baadur Jobava (Georgia) is waiting for his opponent. He is about to win a quick and beautiful game against GM Pavel Ponkratov (Russia)

GM Sandipan Chanda (India)

IM Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (India) won against GM Boris Savchenko (Russia)

GM Le Quang Ljem (Vietnam) - GM Alexander Khalifman (Russia) 0-1

GM Rauf Mamedov (Azerbaijan) drew today

IM Venkatesh M.R.

WGM Nazi Paikidze (Georgia)

WGM Ju Wenjun (China)

GM Alexander Ipatov (since recently - Turkey)

GM Harika Dronavalli wearing kameez

The famous author of the best textbooks on chess in the world Mark Izrailevich Dvoretsky

Matinian Nikita (Russia) - GM Alexander Shimanov (Russia)

IM Lalith Babu and IM Debashish Das (both from India)

GM Tejas Bakre (India)

WGM Soumya Swaminathan (India)

IM Nisha Mohota (India)

WGM Mary Ann Gomes (India)

IM Evgenia Ovod (Russia)

Fide Arbiter Sergey Sudakov from Saint-Petersburg

Correspondent of chess-news.ru Elena Klimets

Arbiter Oksana Zhak

GM Pavel Ponkratov. The monument of the Worker and Kolkhoz Woman is in the background. Minus 20 Celsius

Aeroflot open 2012, 3nd round.

...And one time was not enough, so i went to the hotel Cosmos again, to take more pictures. Here you can see the pictures from the 3nd round and not only from the playing hall :)

GM Fabiano Caruana made a draw and now is one of the eight leaders of the tournament

So did GM Abhijeet Gupta :)

GM Ildar Khairullin (Russia), GM Adhiban Baskaran (India) and GM Rauf Mamedov (Azerbaijan)

GM Harika Dronavalli (India)

IM Yilmaz Mustafa (Turkey) - GM Yu Yangyj (China)

GM Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter (Romania) - GM Krishnan Sasikiran (India)

GM Aleksey Aleksandrov (Belarus)

B group:

IM Evgenia Ovod - FM Sergey Grishchenko

WGM Padmini Rout

IM Nisha Mohota finished her game early...

...and so did GM Tejas Bakre. I admire these two people. Although it was about minus 20 degrees Celsius, they were brave enough to go outside the hotel, and to walk around with me for at least 30 minutes.

See how brave they are!

Nisha in front of the VDNKH or All-Russia Exhibition Centre.

Tejas and the snow!

Please, take my picture quickly, it is terribly cold to sit here and posing!

Pakka? :)

It was getting colder and colder, darker and darker. So we went back to the hotel to take some coffee. In the hotel we met Sandipan.

It took a very long time for the restaurant to serve us coffee. Sandipan already left, but we were still waiting. Finally we got what we ordered.

I had a great day. Hope nobody gets ill as a result of our walk in Russian winter! :)