Mixed feelings

Last night came the dreaded moment when my country of residence, Australia, took on my country of birth, England, in the women's Olympiad. I found it very difficult to cheer for one team or another. In the end, the Australian team won by a narrow margin which was something of an upset but good from my point of view was that Anne-Marie James drew with Sally Yu, probably the 2 players in both teams I know the best. This match has pulled the Aussie women's team up the rankings to 32nd or equal 23rd in match points terms. From a starting position of 51st this is a fantastic effort and they will continue their tournament next against a strong Serbian team, where Australia will be out rated by quite a bit on every board. However, this Olympiad has provided quite a few upsets already in both men's and women's sections, and Australian team spirit will be high for the match.

The women's event was virtually decided in the last round with the match up of China-Russia. These 2 amazing teams had been cutting a swathe through the rest of the field, and their 7th round encounter seemed like a tournament decider. Of course, with 4 rounds to go, anything could happen, and it is unlikely that a team will be able to hold it together for every match in the event, but the Russian women have given themselves a great opportunity to retain their title by beating China 3-1. If Russia do win, then it will add to the stories in Olympiad history, as the team were nearly denied entry to the event before it began. The Olympiad organisers had denied the Russian women a spot in Tromso after Russia failed to enter their team list on time. This caused a crisis in the chess world with FIDE President Ilyumshinov finally stepping in to use his Presidential power to allow the Russian women a spot. By all accounts, the late entry was due to Kateryna Lagno changing federations from Ukraine to Russia, and the Russian's not wanting to name the team until that change came through. It has certainly worked out well for the Russian's as Lagno's victory over Women's World Champion, Yifan Hou was an integral part of Russia's victory yesterday.

The Open section also had some amazing results. Firstly, Azerbaijan are on an absolute mission in this event, and with the sad death earlier in the year of star player Gashimov, it as if the team are playing with a purpose of winning the tournament as a tribute to him. Azerbaijan are now sole leaders having won all games except one draw. Of course, it gets harder to keep things going the further the tournament goes, and today they have a very tough draw against China who have already drawn with the Russians in an earlier round. Not that Russia are performing that well. After struggling to beat Uzbekistan, they then lost to the Czech Republic and currently languish in 16th spot 3 points off the leaders. In fact, there are a whole bunch of top nations above Russia who could easily win their last 4 matches to take out the title should Azerbaijan slip. Armenia, Ukraine, France and the USA have all come back from disappointments earlier, and are all ahead of Russia. The English team are on the same score as Russia, with surprisingly, Scotland also in that group.

Australia's men had a fine win against higher rated Mexico yesterday, that has pulled them up to 50th, though they are on the same score as the team in 28th. The open event has the most amazing pairings in round 8, and at the top, every match will be hard fought. It will be hard pushed to top the USA-Hungary pairing, though, where 5th seeds take on 6th seeds. Russia need to win all their remaining 4 matches to stand any chance of a top finish, and that starts tonight against a tough Spanish team. England out rate Serbia by quite a margin, but that won't help to make their job easier as the Serbs have been playing well so far. Australia have to play Uzbekistan where David Smerdon will continue his tournament against tip rated opposition. After drawing with world number 2 Aronian earlier in the tournament, he has to face 2700 rated Kazimdzhanov today.

Anton Smirnov at the Australian Championship in January

Australia's star performer has been their youngest player, 13 year old Anton Smirnov who has scored an impressive 5.5/6 for a rating performance just below 2600. It's Anton's turn to rotate out of the match today, but there will be 3 more matches after that when he will hopefully add to his tally. Meanwhile, England's star has also been the bottom board. Matthew Sadler took time off chess, but he is back and performing well, with 5.5/7 for a 2696 performance. England have had some tough pairings, but have performed quite well. Nigel Short has perhaps been the weakest link this time round, but he is a stalwart for England and may yet come through in the final rounds, that is if he isn't working too hard in his role in the Kasparov electoral team.

Back to Chess

I have been on a chess free vacation for the past 2-3 weeks and it is time to get back into the swing. It seems while I was away I missed much in the chess world, though there is now so much top class chess happening and being reported on that it doesn't really matter much. It was no surprise that Yifan Hou regained her World Championship, though perhaps the ease with which she defeated Anna Ushenina was. And while I was away there were men's and women's Grand Prix tournaments, that now seem to happen so frequently that they are just more of the same old thing. This time round, Koneru won the women's event, while the men's tournament was jointly won by Caruana and Gelfand. The World Junior Championships were won by the top seed in the boys, Yangyi Yu while my tip for the girls title, Aleksandra Goryachkina won the event. It is reassuring that one of my tips has come through, though I probably know more about girls chess than the top level of chess at the moment.

Personally, I am about to start playing again. Next week I am playing a small one day event at the Melbourne Chess Club. The MCC Quads are designed for players who have little time but want to play long play chess. Players are allocated into 4 player groups and have to play 3 games of about 60 + 20 in a day. I think it is a great idea, and while I know it will be tough to play at a constantly good level for 3 games, I am eager to play some rated chess again. In fact, it will be interesting to see how far off my play has dropped after not playing any serious competitive chess for about a year. I certainly expect a bit of rustiness, especially tactically. The question is, how to prepare for the event? Should I try to play loads of online chess? Should I study some openings? Should I be trying to solve as many tactical puzzles as possible? Hmmm, I guess I'll just continue to do what I normally do and play as best I can on the day. I'll be blogging some things here over the next week, so you'll see some of the things I'm doing to prepare.

One thing I'll be doing is following the games from the Russian Championship Final which started yesterday. The men's event is really an amazing field with Kramnik the top seed. Inspired by the fact that I recently got something right, I'm going to go for Peter Svidler for this event, he always seems to pay well at the Russian Championships. Yesterday, in the first round he started with a win, but then again so did Kramnik on a day when all the games were decisive. Number 2 seed, Karjakin lost though this was with black to Andreikin who proved just how good he was in the recent World Cup.

Finally, did I say my tipping had improved? Not really, I got one right and this has gone to my head a bit. Well, to come back to earth, I also suggested that Mirko Rujevic was going to be tough to beat in the MCC Open. Tough to beat he no doubt is, but not impossible as was proved last week by Justin Penrose. The previously unbeaten Rujevic is now on 3/4 with a large group of players while Penrose takes a half point lead into the 5th round played tomorrow. The tournament is still wide open, and Mirko must still be considered one of the favourites. Round 5 sees Penrose playing black against Dizdarevic on board 1, while the top 2 seeds, Rujevic-Pyke, play on board 2.

Right I'm off to do some preparation for next week's tournament. In America I bought a book and am going to find a good coffee and browse through it. Hopefully some of the games will get that far.

Olympiad round up

Well that was an amazing event! Both the men's and women's tournaments went to the wire, with Armenia edging out Russia in the Open section, while Russia beat China in the Women's section. Man of the tournament was Armenian number 1, Levon Aronian who led his team from the front, posting a 2848 rating performance and 70% on the top board against all the strongest opposition. Women's world champion, Yifan Hou starred in the women's section with a 2645 performance and 72%. One thing worth noting is the bi-polar tournament of the Netherlands. Obviously disturbed by the absence of board 1 Anish Giri, the 9th seeded team found themselves in lowly 74th place after 4 rounds. In round 5 Giri played his first game, arriving in Istanbul after visa problems, and from then Netherlands started their move, finishing eventually in 6th.

The tournament wrapped up with the closing ceremony, and almost as soon as the event closed, the tweets started about Tromso 2014. The big question regarding the next Olympiad is whether the host nation will be able to get their star player, World number 1 Magnus Carlsen, to play. Even with Carlsen Norway are unlikely to place near the medals, but they would probably do better than their 54th place starting from a ranking of 45. The venue for the 2016 Olympiad was decided at the FIDE council, and disappointingly, it was given to Baku in Azerbaijan. Personally I have no problem with Azerbaijan but the fact that Armenian's will not travel there means that we are likely to have a tournament without one of the big favourites. Really FIDE should insist on host nations who are not in conflict with others, so while I am not happy with Azerbaijan, I would be equally dissatisfied, for example, with Armenia.

Australians should be proud of the performance of their teams, who suffered at the start of the event from illnesses, but who pulled through. The Open team had a remarkable event, with young stars Moulton Ly and Max Illingworth having particularly notable tournaments. Moulton scored 70% on board 2 for a 2541 rating performance which shows that he is capable of playing at GM standard. Max also scored 70% as board 5, scoring an IM norm which means he will be an IM as soon as he reaches 2400 which surely cannot be too far away. Max also finished in the top 20 for his board. Australia's women had an indifferent start to the event but came through to finish in 50th, which is where they were originally ranked. All the women chipped in with performances, and Ariane's last round victory against Peng Zhaoqin rated 2411 was a real highlight.

Istanbul 2012 was a great media event, and a competitive success. There is a huge amount of material with thousands of games ready to download or view online. There are also pdf bulletins which can be downloaded with games and information about the event. There is enough raw material to keep most of us busy until the next Olympiad in 2014. One game that may have escaped your notice was from the round 1 match between Mozambique and Bangladesh. It isn't often you see 4 queens on the board by move 10.