ChessKid Russia Superfinal a Great Success!

This past weekend the ChessKid Russia Superfinal concluded. The event was run by the 12th Women's World Chess Champion and Director of ChessKid Russia, GM Alexandra Kosteniuk.

Why "Superfinal"? Well, not only was the tournament a culmination of many monthly championships throughout the year, but also because in the overall Russian championship, it is also called a Superfinal. We wonder if any of these ChessKids will qualify for that one day!? 

Structure of Event

GM Kosteniuk ran monthly ChessKid tournaments from September 2020 until April 2021 with the winners of each tournament qualifying for the Superfinal. The eight champions of each monthly tournament were:

1 - Пахомкина Евгения 1764 (AquaSportyAngler)
2 - Преображенская Диана 1676 (Preobrazhenska_Diana)
3 - Родионов Вадим 1649 (VadimR)
4 - Шухман Анна 1622 (Speshka)
5 - Мансурова Мумтозбегим 1550 (mmtashkent)
6 - Коваленко Алексей 1513 (Aleksey_Kovalenko)
7 - Чистова Катя 1512 (EvenCheeryCrystal)
8 - Толстобров Артем 1495 (MeteorChess)

A big time congrats/молодец for each of these Russian chess superstars for qualifying for the final!

The participants of the event.

The Superfinal

The Superfinal was streamed by GM Kosteniuk which can be rewatched here. A knockout tournament was used where each ChessKid was placed into a quarterfinal group. The winner of each quarterfinal advanced to the semifinals, and the winner of each semifinal advanced to the Superfinal.

The quarterfinals and semifinals played four games of 5+5. An Armageddon game was used in the event of a tie (which happened twice in the quarterfinals!). The Superfinal was best of six games of 5+5.  

GM Alexandra Kosteniuk with the last two Superfinal participants.

The two contenders who made it to the finals were Преображенская Диана (Preobrazhenska_Diana) and Шухман Анна (Speshka). Шухман Анна (Speshka) won in nail-biting fashion. A big time congratulations to the two Superfinal participants. They both won free entry into the Intercontinental ChessKid/FIDE Challenge, taking place on June 19th.