One round before the finish the leader was substituted again in the 2016 Moscow Open Men’s Cup of Russia stage, held these days in the RSSU. The new leader is the winner of the last tournament Ernesto Inarkiev. Today in the Round 8 he won over Artyom Timofeev from Kazan and scored 7 points.

Six chess players are following the leader: Anton Korobov and Alexander Moskalenko (both from Ukraine), Artyom Timofeev (Kazan), Urii Eliseev and Dmitry Gordievsky (both from Moscow).

It’s hard to predict the winner of the Women’s Cup of Russia event. One round before the finish the first place is shared between five chess players: Anastasia Bodnaruk (St. Petersburg), Swaminathan Soumya (India), Alexandra Obolentseva (Moscow), Iulija Osmak (Ukraine) and Veronika Schneider (Hungary). All of them scored 6,5 points. Six more participants with half a point less are following the leading group.

The same situation is formed in the Veterans’ tournaments. The places 1-5 are shared between Evgenii Vasiukov (Moscow), Evgeny Sveshnikov (Chelyabinsk), Evgeny Kalegin (Ufa), Vladimir Kachar (Moscow region) and Evgeny Ilyushkin (Samara).

As for the Amateurs’ tournament the sole leader has appeared for the first time. After eight rounds Pavel Toropov (Tatarstan) with 7,5 points gained the lead. Valentin Vlassow and Grigory Malyshev (both from Pskov), Kirill Shubin (St. Petersburg) and Sergey Galakhov (Ukraine) are half a step behind the leader.

The games of the final Round 9 will start Sunday, Feb 7. We should mark that the games will start at 11 am Moscow time on this game day.