Jubilee Final of Belaya Ladya to Take Place in Sochi on June 1 – 11

In 2019, the open all-Russian school chess team event Belaya Ladya is celebrating its 50-year jubilee. The event final is taking place in Dagomys, Sochi, on June 1 – 11. This time we anticipate as many as 105 teams, including 25 from abroad. Making their debut in Dagomys are players from the South America, while the African continent enlarges its representation because of Egypt, Namibia and Sudan.

The tournament is co-organized by the Russian Chess Federation (RCF) and the Ministry of Sport of the Russian Federation. The competition is also supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation, the Federal Grid Company Unified Energy System (FGC UES), and PhosAgro.

A team lineup is four players (with at least one girl) aged up to 14 years inclusive. The competition is a nine-round Swiss. The closing ceremony is scheduled on June 10.

Best foreign players are entitled to participate in the 2020 international tournament Aeroflot Open. The best Russian team will head to France to challenge their French peers – something made possible by Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation and RCF.

Founded in 1969, the all-Russian scholastic chess team event Belaya Ladya has been gaining in the number of participants over the last few years. Participating in qualification tournaments run across all regions of Russia from September 2018 to May 2019 were over 50000 schoolchildren aged under 14.

Beginning with 2015, the final has been elevated to the status of an international event. This year's edition is expecting about 25 international teams, winners of their national competitions. The statistics show schoolchildren from six countries arrive in Dagomys in 2015, nine in 2016, seventeen in 2017, and twenty in 2018.



This edition is expecting to see teams from 80 regions of Russia and such states as Armenia, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, England, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Mongolia, Namibia, Romania, Slovakia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The team representing orphanages and boarding schools is participating in the final of Belaya Ladya for the fifth year in a row. Representatives of the Lulpan center for orphans and children bereft of parental care from the Republic of Mari El earned their way into the final after winning the Ascension tournament. The Ascension tournament among orphanages and boarding schools took place in March 2019. Participation of this team in Belaya Ladya is made possible via the RCF program aimed at providing chess education to parentless children.



As part of the additional program there is planned a matchup between school teams of Russia and India. The matchup is a two-format contest in standard and blitz chess. A team is made up of two boys and two girls. India's board one – a 12-year old Gukesh – is the world's youngest GM at the moment.

June 3-5 is an international seminar for coaches and teachers run by GM Sergey Janovsky, head coach of the Russian national chess teams.

A rich cultural and entertaining program for young players has become a tradition that begins with the opening ceremony and lasts throughout the entire event and is known to include various contests in football, basketball, badminton, bughouse chess, not to mention the existence of playing hall, creative contests and intellectual quizzes, a movie club and drawing workshops with a team of experienced volunteers. Each evening program will see games analyzed and master classes given in Russian by the senior coach of the Russian women's team, GM Sergei Rublevsky and by GM Pavel Maletin; meanwhile, similar activities in English will be carried out by the former European champion GM Ernesto Inarkiev and senior coach of the Russian junior team GM Mikhail Kobalia.



Running in parallel with Belaya Ladya will be a closing competition of the Chess in Schools project, co-organized by the Russian Chess Federation and the Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation. The closing competition features 11 teams from the Altai, Zabaykalsky, and Krasnodar Krais, from the Bryansk, Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Pskov, and Tula regions, as well as from the republics of Ingushetia, Udmurtia, and Chuvashia.

On June 3-6 there is scheduled an international conference Chess in Schools, participating in which are Russian and international experts to present, among other things, their reports sharing experience and findings of the Chess in Schools project from 11 regions of the Russian Federation.

Tournament page

Photos by Vladimir Barsky and Eteri Kublashvili


For reference:

Belaya Ladya is an annual All-Russia chess tournament for teams of educational institutions. It was founded in 1969 and is organized by the Russian Chess Federation and the Ministry of Sport of the Russian Federation under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and Science. The tournament is held with the support of the Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation. Eligible for participation are pupils younger than 14. The tournament is held in several rounds; the best teams from the participating regions play the final games. Prior to 1991, Belaya Ladya, along with Leather Ball and Golden Puck, was tremendously popular, and millions of Soviet schoolchildren played qualifying rounds. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the tournament took a pause lasting longer than a decade. Belaya Ladya was revived in 2004. The mission of the tournament is to popularize chess among pupils, find talented young players and develop the creative and intellectual capacity of young people.

Russian Chess Federation (RCF) is a public non-profit organization that brings together individuals and chess federations of republics, regions, federal cities, autonomous regions and districts of the Russian Federation. The mission of the Russian Chess Federation is to promote and popularize chess in the Russian Federation. The RCF was founded on 15 February 1992 The RCF organizes the annual All-Russian children’s chess tournament Belaya Ladya, the Championship of Russia and other chess tournaments. In 2012, the RCF launched the “Chess in Museums” program. In 2014, the RCF launched the Chess to Orphanages program. The first competition between teams from orphanages and boarding schools took place in Zhemchuzhina Grand Hotel in Sochi on May 2-9, 2016

Official website: www.ruchess.ru/en/ 

Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation is one of the biggest family charitable foundations in Russia. The family of Elena and Gennady Timchenko has been doing charity both in Russia and abroad for more than 25 years. In 2010, the Timchenkos founded the charitable foundation in order to achieve long-term progress in philanthropy. The Timchenko Foundation focuses on promoting active longevity, developing amateur children’s sports, solving the problem of the social orphanage, and development of the Russian regions by means of culture.

The Foundation supports people who are changing their lives and the World for the better.

Official site: http://timchenkofoundation.org/en/ 

Federal Grid Company of Unified Energy System (PJSC FGC UES) – is one of the largest electricity transmission company grid of the world. The Company’s assets include about 145.9 thousand km of transmission lines with capacity up to 1,150 kV (PTL) and 958 substations with more than 351.9 GVA. The company maintains and develops the grid system and supervises grid facilities and infrastructure in 79 Russian regions.

The company is a part of PAO Rosseti, the largest power holding of Russia which owns 80.13% of the company’s shares. The company includes more than 22 thousand workers. More than 60% of the employees have a higher professional education. Chairman of the Management Board of FGC UES is Andrey Murov.

Since 2016, the company has been the general sponsor of the Russian chess national teams.

Official website: http://www.fsk-ees.ru/eng/ 

PJSC PhosAgro is a traditional partner of the Russian Chess Federation. PhosAgro group is an absolute leader in the field of delivery all kinds of fertilizers in the Russian market and is one of the three largest producers of phosphate-based fertilizers in the world.

Its core line of business, including a phosphate raw materials, 39 brands of fertilizers, feed phosphates, ammonia, sodium tripoluphosphate, is used by consumers of 100 countries of all inhabited continents. The priority distribution areas, besides Russia and the CIS states, are Latin America countries, Europe and Asia.

The general partner of the Russian Chess Federation since 2010. Andrey A. Guryev, CEO and Chairman of the Management Board of PJSC PhosAgro, is the RCF Vice-President and a member of the RCF Board of Trustees.

PhosAgro group is a strategic partner of FIDE in holding the Grand Prix Series as part of the World Championship Cycle 2019-2020. PhosAgro sponsored the World Chess Championship Matches in Sochi, New York and London, the Candidates Tournament in Berlin, and the Moscow Grand Prix leg (2017).

At the same time, the company continues to promote chess in its presence regions by opening chess classes in sponsored schools and kindergartens as well as financing the education and training of chess pedagogues.

Official website: https://www.phosagro.com