Olympiad Coverage

Day 2 of the event and there were still a lot of mismatches. That didn't stop there being some amazing upsets, but they were few and far between. Most notably, Ivanchuk lost to the board 1 of Norway's second team, and the Ukraine who are seeded second in the event were held to a draw. The teams that I'm following seemed to put in good performances. England won their match comfortably against Singapore, while Australia kept defending champions Armenia to a 3-1 scoreline. Sensational results by David Smerdon who held world number 2 Aronian to a draw, and Max Illingworth who held Sergi Movsesian to a draw were outstanding efforts. In fact all the Australians put in good performances but were outrated by 200+ points per board.

Lower down the field, Hong Kong managed a 2-2 draw with Afghanistan and Bhutan scored a half point against a pretty solid Trinidad and Tobago side. Unfortunately, all the island teams from close to Australia went down 4-0. That is Palau, Solomon Islands, and Fiji. The pairings will start to bring sides closer to their own levels from the next round, though, so it will start to get more competitive across the matches. My own favourite result of the round came from the board 1 match between Seychelles and Romania. Seychelles had scored an excellent 4-0 first round win against the GM led Turkmenistan team. In reality, Turkmenistan had failed to show, and the Seychelles found themselves in unusual territory. However, their board 1, Peter Meier rated 2039 stepped up to the plate against Romania's top board, 2626 rated GM Constantin Lupulescu, and came away with a draw. In fact, the game had looked good for Meier earlier, and in the end Lupulescu forced a repetition to hold the game.

Lupulescu as black is faced with a number for threats around his king with Qxh4+ or Nf7+ with Qxg6+ to follow being the major threats. The Rumanian player bailed out with the perpetual 35..Nf1+ 36.Kh1 Ng3+ 37.Kh2 and Peter Meier came away with a draw against a player 600 points his senior!

In the meantime, perhaps the game of the round was the all GM Fried Liver battle between Shirov and Sulskis.

Now I seem to remember an article in New in Chess a few years ago suggesting 11..Qh4 as an attempt to improve black's play. Sulskis played the sensible looking 11..Kd6 getting out of the discovered check, but after 12.d4 he soon found his king facing a typical Shirov onslaught. To be honest, I'm not sure what black was thinking allowing the Fried Liver against one of the most creative attacking players of our times. Anyway, here's the game.

Finally, here's some other places to follow the Olympiad. The coverage is truly excellent with chess24 and TWIC providing superb coverage of games and news. Facebook and Twitter are full of photo's and news from people on the scene but I'm following the blogs of Kerry Stead, Shaun Press, and David Smerdon. Of course, these all have a typically Australian flavour to them, and I'll be looking for blogs from players and visitors from other countries too.

The Last Chess Post

Tomorrow I'm off on holiday, and won't be thinking about chess for about 3 weeks. This blog will be turning into a travelogue following a roadtrip that I will be undertaking with my wife Caroline around the Western states of the USA. But here is one last post to do with chess before going.

First let's talk about me. I've dropped out of the tournament scene this year, and I'm happy to say that I'm playing in a small event soon after I get back from holiday. The Melbourne Chess Club is running a one day event for groups of 4 players. These quads will be rated in the Australian list, but not in the FIDE list. The games are played at a 60 + 20 time limit (or near to that) and the entry fee covers the cost of rating the games, so there are no prizes. I'm happy with that, as I'd just like to play, though my preparation is going to be wholly psychological, and nothing to do with chess. Hopefully I will feel invigorated after my holiday, so even if my chess is a bit rusty, a positive frame of mind will make up for it. At least that's the plan!

But I wouldn't be immodest enough to tip myself to win this small event. In fact, looking at the growing list of players, I'll be happy with any points at all. But I've learned that tipping is no easy thing. My recent choice of Levon Aronian to take out the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis went spectacularly wrong. Aronian only finished 3rd out of 4 players, and the tournament was won convincingly by World Championship challenger and World number 1, Magnus Carlsen. In the last round, Aronian needed to win against Carlsen to catch him, but offered a draw which was all Magnus needed for first. But in true fighting spirit, Carlsen turned down the draw offer and went on to win the game and the tournament. After this performance, he must surely be considered a favourite to become the next World Champion in November.

My one tip that is coming good is in the Women's World Championship where Yifan Hou is leading Anna Ushenina by 3-1. To be honest, this wasn't too surprising. I think more people were surprised by Ushenina's victory in the World Championship last year, and certainly by Hou's exit. Although this match has a way to go yet,  am hopeful that I have one tip right this time round. As for the Junior World Championship, I wonder whether Wesley So knew I'd tipped him, as the Philippine star is not participating even though his name was on the start list prior to the tournament commencing. The top seeds are now Yangyi Yu and defending champion, Alexander Ipatov. While I'm not going to tip anyone now, I hope that Polish IM J Duda, and Swedish GM Nils Grandelius have good tournaments. Both have started well and are near the top boards as the tournament approaches a third of the way through. In the girls event I'll stick with Goryachkina. She is a great risk taker, and I thought she'd overdone it in the first round (perhaps her opponent had some chance for an advantage with 17.Nc4), but she continually fought for the initiative and won the game. Aleksandra Garyachkina has started with a perfect 3/3 though there's a long way to go.




Finally, I'd like to wish Australian Grand Master David Smerdon a happy Birthday for tomorrow, as I probably won't get the chance tomorrow. Besides being a strong player, David is a great commentator for ICC and would surely have had a great showing in the top English speaking Chess commentator poll recently run by ACP President Emil Sutovsky. Unfortunately, David was overlooked in the starting line up, and the poll was headed by English IM Lawrence Trent. I think Aussies need to campaign to see David get his name on that list and take the coveted position as Best English Language Chess Commentator!

Summer Chess Action

That might seem a funny thing to say for someone who is in mid winter, but up in the Northern Hemisphere, it is summer holiday time and there is an absolute abundance of chess across Europe. Australian GM David Smerdon is currently on 3.5/4 in the Politiken Cup in Denmark, half a point off the 9 leaders, in this 10 round swiss. Things didn't look too clever for David yesterday, but he came up with a great save.

As white Smerdon had lost a pawn, then sacrificed a piece to gain nowhere near enough compensation in the form of activity. Here, he played 25.Rxf6!? Bxf6 26.Bxf6 Rf8, and white should probably take on h8 and try to grovel through a really bad ending a pawn down. Smerdon tried a different tack!

27.Ng4, and got away with it! Black should really now take the bishop on f6, but possibly thought of more. 27..h5?

Ok, so it's white to play and draw! Answer tomorrow :)

(It's tomorrow!!) David played 28.Re7! [threatening 29.Rg7# so black has to move a rook. He can't move the f-rook as there would follow (eg) 28..Ra8 29.Rg7+ Kf8 30.Ne5 and black will have to give up a lot of material to avoid mate. So he has to play] 28..Rh7 29.Nh6!+ Rxh6 30.Rg7+ Kh8 31.Rf7+ Kg8 32.Rg7+ with a perpetual draw, and an excellent save!
Smerdon is on the same points as legends Jan Timman and Lajos Portisch, and I'm currently watch Portisch holding his own as black in a Scotch game against Parimarjan Negi. Meanwhile across the Channel, the British Championships opened yesterday with no acceleration. The 11 round Championship will truly come around in week 2 when the placings are sorted out, but it's still quite interesting to see seeds fall, and some classy GM moves against amateur opposition. My favourite move of the first round (of the games I've seen so far) was GM Tony Kosten's winning move.

Kosten playing white has an amazing position, and just needs to find a coup de grace! There might be a number of winning moves here, but none are as stylish as 27.Rc6! 1-0

Grandmaster Glenn Flear had to concede a draw, but perhaps the biggest upset was William Foo beating IM Richard Bates. I know nothing about William Foo other than he is 16 years old (if you believe chessbase) but his play was mightily impressive against Bates. Bates took one risk too many, and Foo was able to win a pawn, which he converted remarkably easily.


I have to say that the website is excellent (especially so after the disappointment of the World Youth Olympiad website) with lots of info. Apparently, Keith Arkell won the Bullet challenge against Gary Lane on Sunday. You can see pictures and read about it on the Championship blog.

As One Ends Another Begins

It's turn around day for my interests in chess. I have been following the exploits of the Australian teams at the World Youth Olympiad in China for the past week or so. Today was the last round, and Australia 1 had a slight chance of picking up a medal if they won their match, and other results went their way. The only issue was that they had to overcome top seed Russia. The Australians gave it a very good shot, but in the end the Russian team, featuring a squad rated averagely above 2400, proved just strong enough winning the match by the closest of margins, 2.5-1.5. However, this left the Aussies in a disappointing 10th place (=9th). The event was dominated by India who started as the number 2 seeds, but in the end proved the only unbeatable team in the tournament. Second were Russia, and equal third were Turkey and Hungary.

Australia fielded 2 teams and the second team started from a middle ranking. Unfortunately this put them in the line of the host nation's mass of teams. China fielded over 40 teams, and some of the international countries had little chance to play anyone other than Chinese teams. Australia 2 were one of these. Despite this, the team did pretty well finishing in a bunch in the mid 30's out of a total of 72 teams. Reading the reports of team coach Ian Rogers on the chesschat forum, I couldn't help but feel his exasperation at this situation with the huge number of Chinese teams. Ian is a respected journalist, and not scared to speak his mind, so I will be keeping my ears open for his analysis of the tournament.

Individually, there was quite some success for the young Australians. Ari Dale secured an individual Silver medal on board 4 for the 1st team scoring an excellent 6.5/9. Bobby Cheng managed the same score on board 1 for the 1st team, a tremendous performance and finishing 5th best board 1! Yi Liu scored 5/8 on board 5 (finishing 5th), Anton Smirnov, playing well above his age bracket scored 4/8 on board 2 (11th), and Justin Tan 2/6 on board 3 (9th). The second team also had great performances, the highlights being Jack Puccini's 6.5/8  (15th) on board 3 and Zach Loh's 5.5/9 on board 2 (23rd).

And so my attentions immediately shifts from China to England, where the 100th British Chess Championships start today. Actually, there have already been some warm up events such as a 14 board simul given by GM Nick Pert, and an hour long bullet match between GM Keith Arkell and IM Gary Lane. I don't know what the final score was here, but I do know that Keith is an unbelievably strong fast player. There are some events that take place in the mornings and these will also have started, but the main opening ceremony is set for about 2 hours time, and the main championship will start about 30 minutes after that. For followers here in Australia, the games are starting about 11.30 pm. Shame for me, as I would have liked to have followed the events live. Never mind, I'll just catch up on the action the next day.

Now you'd think that a tournament without Michael Adams (leading in Dortmund so GB can hardly complain about his absence), Nigel Short, Luke McShane and Matthew Sadler could be considered a let down, but really this is looking like a pretty good championships. A grand total of 13 GM's have entered out of a field of over 100. I'm glad to say there are a few names I remember, but it is also heartening to see many new players reaching this level. While I would wish everyone good luck, it is with the proviso that we all like to see a good upset once in a while!

Now that's a lot of writing with no chess. So, I noticed that Aussie GM David Smerdon is playing the Politiken Cup in Denmark that started a couple of days ago and has started with 3/3. The tournament has some other interesting characters, notably legends of the board, Lajos Portisch and Jan Timman. Now they might not be as great now as they once were, but I'd love to be sat in the same tournament as them! Timman finished his game yesterday pretty quickly! His opponent somewhat imploded at the end!

Olympiad heating up

It's just my luck that on such a dramatic day at the Olympiad as yesterday, I should feel ill and not be able to follow any of the action. Saying that, with the time difference here in Australia, I'd have been in bed before all the main action really would have happened. While it's frustrating to have to go to bed half way through a game that you've become engrossed in, I suppose if I was still living in England, then I'd be working while the games were happening.

Australia at the Olympiad:

The Australian men's team have done us proud. Their starting position was 61, but they are currently in 47th place having had a string of good results. In round 8 they beat Ireland with nice wins from Solomon and Illingworth, while they drew with the team from Tajikistan in round 9, though this could have been an even better result had David Smerdon not lost on time in a good position. David's Facebook post says it all:

"Losing on time on move forty when your 2600+ opponent is about to resign...

Wine. Lots of wine." - D. Smerdon

The men should be pretty happy with the way things have gone though. Max Illingworth has been a star on board 4, while the rest of the team (except Alex Wohl who has been having a forgettable tournament and sounds as if he is feeling guilty about it to the team) have been playing respectably well. 

In my opinion, the women have had a tough time of it. They have had some tough pairings for their position, and have done well to stay around the 50th position in which they started. Tonight is another example where the women have a really tough draw against Argentina who are the second highest seeded team in that score group, while Australia are also in the top half of that score group according to seeding. Likewise they got a very tough draw against number 10 seeds Romania earlier in the tournament. Saying that, the women are doing ok, and have all had their moments.

The under 16's will be a little disappointed, though they shouldn't be. Our top team finished in 8th place from a starting rank of 5th. However, in the last round Australia lost to India by 2.5-1.5, while if they would have won 3-1 they would have gained the bronze medals, which shows how close the event was. Australia fielded 3 teams, the other 2 finishing 25th and 30th. It will have been great experience for these kids, and especially working with a Grandmaster coach like David Arutinian.

This amazing video from Chessvibes captures the drama at the end of the big match USA-Russia.

Of course, the main news of the Olympiad was Russia's loss to the American team. With the Russian's seemingly coasting they came up against a team that can be unpredictable. Obviously the USA are strong but they can sometimes disappoint and they can sometimes amaze. Yesterday they amazed, and all the talk on the social networks is of Nakamura's underpromotion. I've felt so ill today that I haven't actually checked it out yet! So USA pull level with Russia, and they are both joined by China and Armenia. The match up of USA-China is an intriguing one where I expect little compromise. These teams play to win, and if they lose it's usually because they push too hard! Meanwhile Russia drop down to play Argentina while Armenia face a resurgent Netherlands. Since Anish Giri arrived the Dutch have turned their Olympiad around and are on the verge on a great result. Giri-Aronian on board 1 is a mouth watering encounter!

In the women's tournament, China hold a 1 point lead from Russia, with a chasing pack a further point down. Having played many of their closest rivals already China face 22 seeds Kazakhstan, while the Russians have a much harder task against Armenia.

The Evans Gambit

I've never played the Evans Gambit with the white pieces. I really don't know why, as white seems to get excellent piece play for a minimal investment. And the resulting positions allow white an initiative while black has the difficult task of defending for a long time, not something that many players below GM standard really enjoy doing. And I suppose that when I was growing up the Evans was not a frequently played opening, even at club level (the King's Gambit was always more popular).

Then came the 1990's, and Kasparov started playing 1.e4 and among other strange, old forgotten systems he bashed out the Evans. Of course, Kasparov was not the only top player to try it out, but there couldn't have been anyone more high profile. Anyway, the children of Kasparov's revolution are far more comfortable with the Evans than my generation. But then again, it still has to be a certain style of player who gives the Evans a go, especially at the Grandmaster level.

One such player is Australian board 1 at the 40th chess Olympiad, David Smerdon. I'm never particularly surprised by what Smerdon plays anymore, I just expect the unexpected. I remember walking into the State Library of Victoria a few years back to browse through some of the books, and there was David Smerdon, checking out some theory on the Scotch Gambit....or was it the Max Lange?

Yesterday, Smerdon played board 1 for Australia in the Olympiad against a very solid Norwegian team amd with the white pieces went all out for activity, putting his 2498 rated opponent onto the back foot. After prolonged pressure, black finally broke and David was rewarded with the full point. For what it's worth, I think that Smerdon's plan of 13.Rd1 and 14.c4 has not been played before, though the idea has been suggested, eg by Costa in Opening Encyclopedia 2011.



Another solid performance by the men's team, with a 2-2 draw with 2014 hosts Norway (without Magnus Carlsen), while our women came on the wrong end of a very strong Indian team who beat us 3.5-0.5. This means the men have a pretty tough assignment in round 3 against Mongolia, while the women take on Macedonia. Good luck to all our players!

ps. this includes the youth players, who have started their tournament with a 4-0 win and followed it up with another win 2.5-1.5, but I'll get to the Junior event in another post :)