Russia gets Bronze at the 2013 Astana World Team Chess Championships
The 2013 Astana World Team Championships ended with the victory of the Ukrainian team with their top formation (Lahno, Ushenina, M. Muzychuk, Zhukova and Gaponenko), congratulations to a great team! The silver and bronze was taken by two teams that were not able to align their best formations, first China playing without Hou Yifan and Zhao Xue, and second Russia (Gunina, Kosteniuk, Pogonina, Galliamova, and Girya) playing without the Kosintseva sisters. My (Russian) team did well, with 4 players out of 5 receiving individual board medals (super performance by Olga Girya with 6.5/8 on the last board). I started on a roll with 4.5/5 and even though I lost the last 2 games, still ended up with a performance of 2502 and just about 1 Elo point gained. More info and photos about the event can be found below. I hope to comment one or more games soon for my YouTube channel. Read also the report on USA’s top chess blog www.chessblog.com.
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I was in Saint Petersburg last week to play in the prestigious Russia vs. China chess match. The event has men and men sections of 5 players each and is played in both classical (5 games) and rapid sections (10 games). This year in the men section, Russia was on top, while in the women, China won. Overall, Russia defeated China overall with 77.5 vs. 72.5 and took the top prize. Full results can be found on 
