In Open section the derby between two leaders Saint-Petersburg Chess Federation and Tomsk-400 finished on favor of Petersburg thanks to Peter Svidler and Nikita Vitiugov decisive victories against Ruslan Ponomariov and Viktor Bologan respectively. As a result, after five rounds Saint-Petersburg Chess Federation took the sole lead in the tournament.
SOCAR Azerbaijan is making their way to the top after the club defeated G-Team Novy Bor. Veselin Topalov and Gata Kamsky scored important victories to gain the lead for their team in the match.
Alexander Morozevich, Evgeny Tomashevsky and Alexander Moiseenko from Economist-SGSEU Saratov outplayed their opponents from Gros Xake Taldea, and with the other three games being drawn, Saratov gained an important victory and shares the second place 2 rounds to go.
Ugra managed to win the tough match against OSG Baden-Baden e.V. Arkadij Naiditsch defeated Alexei Shirov on the second board but his victory didn’t affect the final outcome, as Ugra members Anton Korobov and Alexei Dreev succeeded to win their games against Peter Heine Nielsen and Jan Gustafsson. It was absolutely impossible to predict the outcome of the match between SHSM-64 and Rishon Le-Zion. Despite the rating advantage on every board on favor of Russian team the situation looked more promising for Israeli Club. At the beginning Anish Giri made a draw on the second board while Alexander Riazantsev lost the game against Tal Baron. An extraordinary accident, which turned to be decisive for the fate of the match, happened in the game Leko-Alterman later on. In a slightly worse endgame Peter Leko proposed a draw but his opponent Boris Alterman made a move which turned to be not a good one. When Israeli GM realized he had blundered an exchange he tried to accept the proposed draw but Peter Leko preferred to continue playing and converted his advantage into a full point. The victory of Vladimir Potkin on the last board and heroic defense of Boris Grachev not only saved the match but brought an important victory to Russian team. 

In Women section Monte-Carlo confidently won against Chigorin Club and keeps leading in the tournament. Anastasia Bodnaruk drew her game against Hou Yifan while the others could not hold the pressure. Ugra defeated Rishon Le-Zion with 3,5-0,5 score and placed second only one point behind of Monte-Carlo.
AVS managed to win the first match in the tournament against Israeli club Ashdot with 3,5-0,5 score. The only draw in the match was made between Masha Klinova and Antoaneta Stefanova.
Mika defeated SHSM-Nashe Nasledie to climb on the third rank in the table.

The official tournament web page is http://www.ecc2012-chesseilat.com/

Pictures by Anastasiya Karlovich