Ian Nepomniachtchi played a chess game at a depth of 700 meters in a mine in the Arctic – Chess

Ian Nepomniachtchi and writer Alexander Tsypkin played at a depth of 700 m in a mine in the Arctic.

The game was held in the operating Oktyabrsky mine of Norilsk Nickel’s polar branch. The partners of the chess player and the writer were turner Alexei Schneider and marker Dmitry Sokolov.

Nepomniachtchi played with white pieces, the game lasted 41 moves and ended with the victory of the grandmaster.

“I visited the mine for the first time yesterday, and I have never descended to such a depth. He endured the dive well, but now he thought that he was in the subway, and this is also, in a certain sense, “underground”.

Of course, not so deep, going down 700 meters down is a new experience in my life, and what we saw today is the most unlike my idea of ​​how work in the face is arranged.

I thought it would be 100 times darker here and everyone is wearing respirators, there is smoke around, but everything here is very beautiful and light.

The level of chess players who work for Norilsk Nickel and played with us today turned out to be decent. Both Alexey and Dmitry, I think, showed the level of good candidates for the master of sports, and as for the format, we periodically play like this, have fun.

This is called “hand and brain”, when one person simply calls a piece, and the second must make a move with this particular piece. The whole point of such a game is that the players must cooperate and act in the same stream, be one team, ”Nepomniachtchi said.