The Russian League is the strongest in the world, and Tomsk has been its dominant team with five championship victories, yet the Siberian city failed to reach the starting line in the just completed 2013 event at Sochi. The team captain, Boris Shaidullin, explained that Tomsk had depended on support from the city's governor, and that now there was a new man in charge who had diverted the chess budget to soccer. Tomsk's elite grandmasters were quickly snapped up by rivals, and the main beneficiar...
The Russian League is the strongest in the world, and Tomsk has been its dominant team with five championship victories, yet the Siberian city failed to reach the starting line in the just completed 2013 event at Sochi. The team captain, Boris Shaidullin, explained that Tomsk had depended on support from the city's governor, and that now there was a new man in charge who had diverted the chess budget to soccer. Tomsk's elite grandmasters were quickly snapped up by rivals, and the main beneficiar...
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