Competition to host Grand Finals extended to 31 July

The Chess Federation of Russia with support from the Charitable Foundation of Elena and Gennady Timchenko are holding a competition to host the Grand Finals of Russian chess championship as part of the Chess at Museums project. The entry deadline has been extended until 18:00 on 31 July; the results will be announced at 13:00 17 August 2020.

The Grand Finals in the 73rd Russian chess championship for men and the 70th Russian chess championship for women are expected to take place at the end of 2020.

The competition is open to provincial chess federations with experience in running competitions and the required technical resources, and willing to work in harness with local museums. Apart from the museum dimension, an important aspect of the Chess at Museums programme is public events. On weekends the organizers arrange master classes and simultaneous displays for enrollees of children’s chess schools and clubs, and competitions for chess movement veterans. For more information about the competition, please visit the websites of the Timchenko Foundation and CFR.

Since 2012, when the world chess championship match was hosted by the Tretyakov State Gallery in Moscow, the FShR [Chess Federation of Russia (CFR)] has been holding, with support from the Timchenko Foundation, the highest-profile national championships and international tournaments on the premises of major museums in Russia and the world over. The Alyokhin Memorial 2013 was hosted by the Louvre (Paris) and the St. Michael’s Castle of the State Russian Museum (St Petersburg); the Tal Memorial 2016 and 2018 by the Museum of Russian Impressionism (Moscow).

The Chess at Museums project has been providing venues for all Grand Finals of the Russian championship since 2014. Champion titles were contested at the Rukavishnikov Manor House in Nizhny Novgorod and at the Khazine National Art Gallery in the Kazan Kremlin. Since 2016, the venue for Grand Finals has been chosen by competition. As a result, the Grand Finals were hosted by the Novosibirsk State Museum of Local History in 2016, by St Petersburg’s Museum of Political History of Russia in 2017, by the Magnezit [Magnesite] DK [House of Culture (HOC)] in the town of Satka (Chelyabinsk Oblast) in 2018, and in 2019 the best female and male chess players of this country played in two towns of the Udmurt Republic: in Votkinsk, at the Tchaikovsky home museum, and in Izhevsk, at the Palace of Friendship of Peoples.