I am provoked to say that it is for the next time, though not in succession but following the unexpected last year miss, that the strongest Ukrainian team of all last years - «Danko-Donbass» - won. Having preserved its almost invariable membership (Baklan, Kruppa, Kuzmin, Timoshenko, Shneider, Gurevich and Savchenko), the Donbass team has left few chances for its competitors from the «Grandmasters' School» and «Law Academy».

It is hard not to pay attention to the fact that the big chess centers, among which there are Lviv and Odessa, did not present their teams again. Until now the majority of Ukrainian chess players conceived that a chess club is something free for the citizens and is supported and managed by the state, and team competitions are taken seriously if the participation in the team is directly connected with the place of residence. Under such circumstances it is for certain that the real club system can not naturalize. Let us wait for about decade and see what happens.

/ by Mikhail Golubev /