Daniil Dubov prevailed against Vladimir Belous in the old master style and closely approached the leader of the Alexander Pochinok Memorial Men’s Student Grandmaster Tournament. We addressed several questions to the Moscow grandmaster.
- Daniil, congrats on the brilliant victory! Tell us about the key moments.
- Thank you. There was uncompromising struggle during the whole game: we both were playing for the win, as I started the game poorly and Volodya’s start was even worse. His opening play came as somewhat of a surprise. I know, there is such a line, but it's been a long time since I've studied it. It seems to me Volodya Fedoseev was playing the same as black in Taganrog not too long ago. Now that Volodya is a star, it’s best to follow all his games carefully.
The key moment happened when my opponent moved 15…Bg4, and I sacrificed my bishop on f7. It seemed to me if I didn’t attack the f7, I wouldn’t receive any advantage. Usually I’m trying to logically evaluate such positions, that’s why I thought I must sacrifice, otherwise everything would be way too comfortable for black. In the end of the game Volodya made a blunder and I was a little bit upset that I didn't sacrifice the queen 27.Qe6! with mate (you can find a detailed report of this game in the Round 4 annotations by Alexander Kalinin).
Honestly, I think it wasn’t a top-quality game, but taking into account everything that happens in the tournament, it’s not so bad. I’m glad, I managed to win.
- Are Volodya and you old rivals?
- We have a few years' age difference, but we've only met once in junior tournaments. In 2009 at the U16 Championship of Russia. If I’m not mistaken, he was 16 and I was 13, so we were playing at odds. He won that tournament, and I took second. I think, all toether, we've played fewer than 5 games against each other. It turned out that I stopped playing in junior tournaments quite early, that’s why I didn’t play much against other players of the same age. For example, we played only two games with Volodya Fedoseev in spite of just a year age difference. And only one game with Ivan Bukavshin.
- So it means, you don’t know your opponents in this tournament well from the chess point of view?
- Yes. I met them many times, but we didn’t share the board. It seems to me, I met Ulvi Bajarani many times in different junior competitions, but here I played with him for the first time. Daniel Sadzikowski is the person I’ve never met before but the quality of his games place him to the second or third position. The result of our game was a thoroughly logical draw.
- Tell us about your study in the RSSU, please.
- It’s nice, the University is doing everything possible to support pro athletes, including chess players. By the way, several times I met famous football players in the RSSU. It’s interesting, one of my friends is playing for FC Rostov, that is great. And once I met in the university his teammate and we found out we have a mutual friend. As for the study, I need to pass all the exams, but I have exemption from attendance. I survived just one exam session. I hope to believe it was successful.
- Daniil, thank you for the comments and the talk. Good luck!
- Thank you.