The grandmaster, coach and talented organizer Alexander Potapov has been the Head of the Polar Chess School named after Anatoly Karpov in Salekhard for 12 years already.  He’s been bringing his students to the Moscow Open since the establishment of the festival. The interviewer of the official website is talking to Alexander. 

- Alexander, you visit the Moscow Open every year. Why does the festival attract you and other devoted participants?

- If I’m not mistaken, our athletes participated in the all Moscow Open Festivals, starting with the first. It’s clear, the festival is developing, growing and becoming extraordinary popular. Of course, it’s pleasant, there are many tournaments, including the one for the kids. In a word, everything is great.

I’d like to thank the organizers of the tournament, and first of all, the Russian State Social University, thanks to them we have such a tournament in our country. As well as the Moscow Chess Federation and the Russian Chess Federation. The words of gratitude would be incomplete without mentioning Alexander Nikolaevich Kostiev, who is, to my opinion, is the motor of the project. The conditions would be worse without his support. 

However, I have some proposals to the organizers. I would advise to work over the Tournament A conditions, and to provide the winner with the qualification to some elite international round-robin tournament, as the Aeroflot Open is doing. I think, this can attract even stronger grandmasters.

Moreover, maybe there is a sense of organizing such a tournament in the period of summer holidays in view of the crisis. Especially now, when the cost of trips abroad has risen significantly. I think, if there is such a possibility, it will be interesting to organize such a tournament in the summer period.

Also it seems to me if this university is social, then one of the tournaments of the festival can be organized for the disabled people. I understand the organizational complexities, but maybe the organizers will pay attention to this idea and will support the initiative.

- Thank you for the proposals. Who have you brought this time?

- I can say this time the strongest chess players representing our region have come. They play in the A and B tournaments. We also have some kids from different cities of our region who have been competing in the H tournament since the early morning. First of all, we direct our attention to the known to everyone Aleksandra Goryachkina, who is the ranking favorite of the Women’s Cup of Russia State.

- How did you meat Aleksandra Goryachkina? How long have you been working with her?

- I can speak about Aleksandra for a long time (laughing). The history of her moving to Yamal originates from my child tournaments. Some time in the past her dad Yury and I were playing in the same tournaments, were competing. At that time I was living in the Chelyabinsk region, and he – in Orsk. Then our kids grew up and also started to play chess as well. At the World Championship-2010 in Vietnam where Sasha became the U10 World Champion, Yury complained he had some financial difficulties with the organization of trips to competitions and payment of coach fees. And we were looking for coaches. Actually I invited her farther as a coach. The Goryachkin family took some time to think the proposal over, their financial situation didn’t improve, unfortunately, and as a result they agreed to move to Salekhard.

I think the best illustration of the correctness of their decision can be seen on the FIDE site in the section of the ranking changes (laughing). When Sasha moved to us, her ranking was 2039, if I’m not mistaken. And in the course of two years she fulfilled the international master and grandmaster standards and burst into the elite of the Russian women’s chess.  We had to make her dad devote himself to the training process and accompany Sasha at the tournaments.

The Region Government and the Department of Sport support Sasha very well, and we try to satisfy all their wishes and send Sasha to all the calendar competitions.

- Tell us about the Polar Chess School named after Anatoly Karpov.

- This is the Olympic School. This status the school received according to the Order by the Ministry of Sport of Russian Federation. Last year we submitted the documents for its prolongation. I hope we will receive the prolongation due to our sports results.

Around 250 kids attend the school. At the moment we have 14 coaches. Unfortunately, our region is located very far from the center, and our climate conditions are far from being ideal.  Children don’t travel to the competitions as often as we'd like. Especially now in the crisis time, that’s why we have to reduce the number of people participating in the competitions. Only the best kids attend the tournaments.

However, our kids are competitive in the Ural Federal Region Competitions as well as the Championship of Russia. Every year, the team of our graduators takes part in the Team Championship of Russia. Maybe they don’t aim for the top places, but it’s not so easy for the favorites to leave our team unscathed.

Besides, around six of our students have graduated from Russian State Social University, many of them came back and work in our school. For instance, my deputy Diana Zhdanova was the student of the first recruitment. Andrey Okara was also studying here, Pavel Potapov is passing the post-graduate course now, Sergey Savitsky, Alina Pronizina are still studying: so we can talk of many guys.

In general, you can say, the RSSU provides the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous region with the skilled staff (laughing)!

- Alexander, thank you for the interesting talk. Good luck to your guys!