I have never been to Siberia, but just thinking about it makes me want to play some chess and perhaps have a little vodka. Imagine yourselves, dear Arizonans accustomed to the searing desert, in Siberia, surrounded by snow and ice most of the year. Outside it is so cold that you don’t need a freezer to have iced vodka. Your only choice is to stay home and find something to do.

“How about a game of chess, Dmitry?”

That is how it must be to live in Siberia. In fact, this frigid land is one of the most active places when it comes to the practice of chess. In that Russian region, there are hundreds of chess clubs and young children still learn the game in school, like in the old days.

But Siberia is more than ice, chess and alcoholism, it also has vast natural resources, especially oil and gas. And that means money for municipal governments, that can spend part of the revenues organizing chess events.

That is the case of Poikovsky, a prosperous town in the heart of Siberia, which every year organizes the Anatoly Karpov Chess Tournament. Traditionally, the chess level played in this tournament is extremely high, and this year was not an exception. Ten Grandmasters with an average ELO of 2,654 gathered there from March 15‑24 for a few games of chess, and perhaps a little vodka. This year’s winner was Dmitry Jakovenko, a 24‑year‑old Grandmaster who was born in the nearby town of Nizhnevartovsk.

In the nine rounds of the event, he managed to go undefeated. At tourney’s end, he finished a full point ahead of second place Alexander Onischuk, the reigning U.S. champion.

This might make you think that the entire tournament went smoothly for Jakovenko, but it did not. The path to victory cleared only after the 7th round, when he defeated 22‑year‑old countryman Evgeny Alekseev, which leads us to the game we present today.

Prior to the 7th round, Alekseev was only a half point behind Jakovenko, so even though he was playing with black, Alekseev decided to play for all or nothing and as offensively as he could. He chose to play the Najdorf variation of the Sicilian defense, one of the sharpest variations of this opening.

I am pretty sure that before the game Alekseev did not know the track record of Jakovenko with this opening, because it is just as impressive. As far as I know, he has never lost an official game playing against this variation, and this time he only needed 32 moves for the victory.

Goodbye, beautiful Siberia, we will come back to you in 2010, when the Chess Olympics and the Chess World Cup will be held in Khanty Mansiysk!