Gabriel Mironiuc, an 11-year-old pupil at the “Alexandr Pușkin” Lyceum in Ungheni, was the best-placed player from the Republic of Moldova in his section at “Open Bohumín” — one of the region’s largest amateur chess festivals, held in July in the Czech Republic. Ungheni City Hall, which made the achievement public, announced a bronze medal for him.
Beyond the distinction, the result says something concrete about the boy’s level. The tournament, now in its ninth edition, was held from 4 to 12 July in Bohumín, a town in the Moravia-Silesia region, near the border with Poland. Mironiuc played in the “12. Memoriál Lukáše Krůla” section — a classical tournament rated by the International Chess Federation (FIDE), with a long time control and 26 players. In the section’s final standings, the Ungheni player finished in 6th place and was the best-placed of the two players from the Republic of Moldova entered there.
At festivals like this, alongside the general standings of each section, prizes are often also awarded by age category, and Mironiuc competed in the under-12 category. The tournament’s public table, however, does not include a separate list of prizes by age, so the distinction announced by the City Hall cannot be confirmed from the official results — the bronze medal is, on the other hand, visible in the photograph from the awards ceremony.
That this is no chance result is also shown by the fact that the boy already has an international FIDE rating — the official points a player accumulates in rated games under the federation. At 11, Gabriel Mironiuc appears in the world federation’s database with a standard rating of 1537 points.
A coach and a school with a tradition
According to the City Hall, Gabriel Mironiuc is trained by Vladimir Pricladov, a coach at the Sports School for Children and Juniors in Ungheni, with a career of more than four decades; he has two other pupils in whom the institution places its hopes — Alex Oarza and Liviu Jitoreanu.
Chess in Ungheni has a base that explains results like this. The town has a chess section at the Sports School, a pavilion dedicated to the game in “Micul Cluj” Park — “Chess, a bridge between generations” — and in 2021 it hosted a simultaneous exhibition with former world champion Anatoly Karpov. This summer, the Palace of Culture also organised the local “Golden Summer” festival, with 145 players, almost 6 in 10 of them children.
For a town the size of Ungheni, a secondary-school pupil who sits down at the board abroad, in an internationally rated tournament, and comes out the best-placed of the Moldovans in his section is not just something to congratulate. It is a sign that the work in the chess hall has someone to bear fruit through.