Odessa and The Chess, brief overview

 
Being one of the unconditional cultural centres of the Russian Empire, Odessa was a centre of chess as well. However, this city was not destined to become a place of big chess events of that time. It's worth reminding that young Alekhine visited the pre-Revolutionary Odessa where he later encountered great inconveniences with the proletarian authorities, but that was quire another time.

Still, Alekhine managed to save himself in Odessa and leave the Soviet Russia to continue his spectacular career. Sovet Russia paid, starting from mid 20s, more and more attention to ancient game and Odessa became a famous chess centre of the new state as well. That was the situation from the games of GM Verlinsky, the 1929 Chess Championship of Soviet Russia, during the soar of Efim Geller, the match Petrosian-Korchnoi (1974) and till the 1989 USSR Chess Championship and the World Students Championship (1990) that have been organized here.

After the Ukraine gained its independence, the situation has changed but Odessa is still often perceived in the old light. Is it really so? Some facts are against that.

The Big Database of the Chess Assistant contains the games played in the most important international and national tournaments. Here, 417,714 games played in about 800 cities of the world in 1992 -1997 are fixed. This singular contest has its leaders - Moscow (13,103 games) and Budapest (11,283 games). Then follow Yerevan, Buenos Aires (the next non-European city - New York - possesses just modest 21st place), Saint-Petersburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Manila, Paris, etc. Among Ukrainian cities and towns quite decently look Yalta (1,102), Alushta (584) and Nikolaev (236) where FIDE Zonal tournaments were held twice. Odessa enriched this library with ... one game. Such is the actual place of our city in organizing serious tournaments. Odessa isn't represented in the team championships of Ukraine since 1995.

There is another statistics, though. Despite everything, Ukraine still comes into the leading top ten chess countries of the world. Vasily Ivanchuk still enters the world elite, a group of young girls who play chess at world level appeared. According to FIDE Directory of Grandmasters (Internet), Ukraine possesses the 6th place in the world by the number of players having the highest title of International GM and is ahead of England and Israel. Odessa is represented with 7 GMs in the total Ukrainian list of 34. In August, the regional club is traditionally holding the international festival. Young Odessite Yuri Drozdovskij has twice won the Championship of Europe in the categories under 12 (in 1996) and under 14 (in 1997). Dmytro Tishyn won European Youth Championship under-10 in 1998. It proves that children chess that do not require considerable investment are well developed in Odessa and are at a high level.

Probably, everybody could find something he likes when reviewing this data. We may assert that the patient is rather alive than dead.

Mikhail Golubev
July 1998
 
 
 
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