Bareev is 2019 Canadian Champ!

Loses 1st game, then wins 7 in a row!

Congrats to Evgeny Bareev for convincingly winning this year’s Zonal championship with 7.5 points from 9 games. Though clearly the highest rated player by quite a margin, Bareev cast doubt on his form when he was crushed in the first round by the youngster Joshua Doknjas.

However, winning his next 7 games catapulted him to the front of the field and a safe draw in the last round against Aman Hambleton sealed his first Canadian Championship.

The problem with Canadian Zonals…

Anyone who has been following this blog over the years will know by now that Canada has EXACTLY the chess federation that it deserves. This is particularly evident when it comes to organizing its national championships, picking its national teams or following its own rules and regulations.

As explained last Friday, this year’s Canadian zonal did not break the mold. The Kingston organizers, along with Aris Marghetis (IA) showed that nothing is improving.

I received quite a bit of mail from Canadian readers complaining of the (non)coverage of the tournament on the ‘net. Only 4 games per round were available to follow. Etc, etc, etc.

Canada does not have to do things better than the rest of the chess world, but why does it always embarrass itself?

A photo of 4 gentlemen connected with the organization. On the right are 3 names! Guesses, anyone, who is who? Or who the mysteryman is and where he is standing?

Now we have just 2 gentlemen, but still it is impossible NOT to fuck up! The gentleman on the right is definitely not Hambleton. (He is Nikolay Noritsyn)