At the end of September, Zenit, a popular football club from St. Petersburg (Russia), Gazprom, General Sponsor of the Online Olympiad, and FIDE joined their efforts to stage a fun and exciting competition. Those who followed @𝘇𝗲𝗻𝗶𝘁_𝘀𝗽𝗯 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 account had a unique chance play against GM Peter Svidler together with Anatoliy Tymoshchuk and win signed Zenit's shirt. In order to do that, they had to catch three chess puzzles in their stories over September 19-20-21 and submit the solution to each of them in the answer to the story by 9 am CET the next day.

It was amazing that so many people (fifty to be exact) solved all three chess problems given in @zenit_spb Instagram stories. A random draw held on Instagram Live (Sept 23, 6 pm CET) picked 15 lucky ones to play in the simul with GM Peter Svidler: @individoom, @dawut504, @mikhail_manuilov, @arjunkalyan617, @contr4s, @leonidkudriavtsev3, @gorkemcanakcili, @niall_fitzgerald16, @andyport2014, @elena.antipova.thymy, @say_my_name_quietly, @alex.z307, @ololoshenkin, @rostickkin, @aleksandra_stepanova_86.

Two players - Anton Bagretsov and Bakhtiyar Askarov - managed to win their games against the renowned GM. They will receive Zenit shirts signed by the whole team, Svidler and Tymoshchuk. Anton, who played his game in Zenit's shirt, will surely be happy to see his collection growing.

Two more players made draws: Viktor Korennoy and 'Mr-Najdorf'. 12 games finished in favor of the grandmaster, including the one against Zenit's trainer Anatoliy Tymoshchuk. In a short interview after the simul, the grandmaster praised the opponents and admitted that his result could have been worse.

Congratulations to the winners! All the participants of the simul will also get a shirt with Svidler and Tymoshchuk autographs. The simultaneous exhibition was streamed live on Zenit Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3dKdWwtjA