Sportsmen from Salda made a good score at Kontur Open International Chess Festival in Ekaterinburg

Verkhnaya Salda, August 30, 2022 — Over thousand sportsmen from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and 40 Russian regions took part in Kontur Open. A team of 12 strong sportsmen of VSMPO-AVISMA chess club «Debyut» from Verkhnaya Salda played in the Children stage Cup — Anatoly Karpov Chess Cup, which had a mass participation.

Sportsmen of «Debyut» demonstrated deserving results and were included in the ranked lists of the top tens. Aleksey Prokhorov reached the highest rating in the Boys Under-13 score table. He gave a half-point to the leader and won the Bronze.

Chess Federation of Sverdlovsk Region highly praises achievement of the sportsman from Salda who has an active world rank. As a result of winnings and top places at tournaments of different level of complexity and skills, including men chess competitions, Prokhorov was assigned a Candidate Master title.

Vladimir Komissarov, Trainer of VSMPO-AVISMA chess club «Debyut», FIDE Arbiter:

«For me, as a trainer, this is also a great success. Last year at the Children Russian Cup final in Yaroslavl, Aleksey, being one of the only eight Russians selected for participation in the Cup, made a breakthrough among the sportsmen of his age and won the third place. The prize-winning place achieved by Aleksey at the 2022 Karpov Chess Cup affords him an opportunity to play for the chess crown in the decisive tournament».

The great heights have been made possible as a result of VSMPO-AVISMA extensive chess project started up in 2017. One of the aspects of the project is expansion of «Chess skills school» for the first-graders. Within five years, over 3 000 of Salda schoolchildren learnt to play chess graduated from the school. Those first-graders who have shown abilities in the brain science attend the corporate club on a regular basis. Up to 100 children can concurrently practice chess in the club.

Every year VSMPO-AVISMA provides chessboards and training aids to sportsmen, pays for professional trainers’ work. Trainers’ staff includes Uljyana Chupina, second-category chessplayer; Roman Novoselov, Candidate Master; and Vladimir Komissarov, FIDE Arbiter (International Arbiter).

Due to the expansion of chess science in Verkhnaya Salda, the town has become a place of various chess tournaments. Annual chess competition program consists of corporate championships, Sverdlovsk Region Championship stages at «Tirus», a corporate recreation center, the «Chess weekend» regional tournament for sportsmen from Sverdlovsk Region and neighboring regions, etc.

The Big Chess Festival that takes place in Verkhnaya Salda on an annual basis is the major attraction for the fans of this game of wisdom. The event includes open children and adult tournaments, and a game of multiboard chess with participation of famous grandmasters invited by VSMPO-AVISMA.

It should be reminded that VSMPO-AVISMA, in addition to the chess movement, supports 15 children sport clubs and 4 sports and physical training facilities: «Start» stadium, «Chaika» sports center, «Melnichnaya» sports and recreation center, «Druzhba» boxing club. Corporate employees attend these facilities at no charge. The Corporation annually allocates significant financial investments for corporate sports programs.