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.

Visitors to the Olympiad

The past couple of days some notable chess celebrities have attended the Olympiad in Istanbul. Former World Champion Garry Kasparov turned up in Istanbul to cheer on the Russian team. In fact, I guess having Kasparov in the building probably turned up the pressure on the Russians to actually win the event this time. Kasparov's presence has certainly done the trick, as the Russian number 1 Kramnik, beat his arch rival Armenian Aronian on top board with a nice piece sacrifice.

Here, Kramnik as white played 23.Nxb7 sacrificing his knight for both black's queen side pawns. After 23..Rxb7 24.Qxa6 Rbc7 25.b4 Qd7 26.Qb6 black's pieces are in a terrible tangle and white went on to win.




Unfortunately for Kasparov, Kramnik's victory was not enough for a match win. The Armenians managed to draw with the Russians, but since then Armenia lost to China while Russia beat Hungary and stand in first place a match point ahead of China and Ukraine. Tonight sees the big match up of Russia against defending champions Ukraine!

While Kasparov witnessed Russian victories, former women's World Champion Susan Polgar was in town, while her sister Judit is playing for the Hungarian team. Judit did her part in the match against the Russians drawing with World number 7, Karjakin, though the Hungarians narrowly lost. Good news for Judit was not just that Susan was in town, but her other sister Sofia also showed up.

Judit, Sofia and Susan Polgar (courtesy of @Arman Karakhanyan on the Olympiad site)

Of course, there could be other reasons for the appearance of people at the Olympiad. Those with political ambitions (such as Kasparov) will not have a better chance of meeting such an amount of national chess dignitaries, and FIDE itself has its congress at the Olympiad. I'm sure that Kasparov, among others, will be checking out some of these activities, as well as spectating the Olympiad. Susan Polgar will no doubt be supporting her sister, but may also be in Istanbul as a coach and a journalist. One person who is not there as a journalist is Evgeny Surov, the editor in chief of the Russian chess news website. He has been denied accreditation as a journalist by the organisers (actually it seems Turkish chess President Ali Nihat Yazici is behind the action) which has caused quite a storm. A number of grandmasters and officials have signed an open letter protesting the treatment of Mr Surov. With only a few rounds to go this won't help Mr Surov at this Olympiad, but if it does anything to stop the political ambitions of Yazici, then it will be a good thing.

Chess Numbers

There are loads of numerical theories (eg) that pertain to chess. Whole sets of maths puzzles are based around chess, and I wouldn't be surprised if some numerologists have tried to put together some greater meaning behind some chess related number patterns. This post has got nothing to do with that but is just a random post about some numbers that I have found interesting.

2693 This is the FIDE rating of Pavel Eljanov and Gabriel Sargissian who are playing each other in round 5 of the Olympiad. What I found particularly interesting  about this is that 2 players with such whopping ratings should find themsleves on the bottom board for their respective teams. The Olympiad is now going through a tough phase (especially as they are using match points as the first determining factor of rank) where the top teams will all have to play each other. Hungary against Russia is another mouth watering pairing, where a repeat of the 2004 World Championship match between Kramnik and Leko is being played out on board 1.

46 (No, not the age I'll be turning next birthday!!) Australia's men's team rank before round 5, 15 places above their starting rank. I'm not sure what the team will consider a good final placing but it is an interesting subject. If Australia finish in the top 50 this may be considered a good result for a team starting from 61st place. Maybe top 40? Will it depend on the opposition. So far, the Australian team have done ok beating the teams ranked below them, and drawing with one of the teams above while only narrowly losing to the other. I also wonder if there is a team perspective on this subject or whether the players themselves are left to set their own targets? The women's team are performing a little below par. They have won 2 and lost 2, but one of their losses was to a team ranked below them, so they will not be happy with that. From a starting position of 50th, I guess the women will be looking to finish above that and perhaps challenge the top 30.

33 Of all players born in 1999, Melbourne youngster Karl Zelesco is ranked 33 in the new FIDE rating list published today. His 2116 rating is still a far cry from the top player of that year group, Yi Wei (2453) of China. However, it only seems like yesterday that Karl was coming through Junior rapid tournaments and we considered him a talented Primary School kid. I will be interested to see just how close he is to representing Australia at the next Olympiad in Norway as the improvement of our youngsters seems to know no bounds. Even Karl's international placing is eclipsed by Sydney's Anton Smirnov who currently sits at number 2 for players born in 2001, his 2139 rating just 15 points shy of the 2154 of Iranian youngster Tabatabaei in first place. So with Karl in Melbourne and Anton in Sydney Australian chess playing adults have a long suffering future ahead of us :(

Karl Zelesco

30 The number of moves in the Olympiad before a draw can be agreed. Also, coincidentally, roughly the amount of time in minutes taken for 30 moves to be made in the game Nguyen-Gagunashvili before it was agreed a draw. I guess if 2 players want to make a draw, then its going to happen! Was there any prearrangement here? Of course not!.....Riiiiiiiiiiiigghhhhtt!!!

21 The record number of Olympiad appearances, made by GM Eugenio Torre of the Philippines. Torre moves clear of Hungary's Lajos Portisch who played in 20, while Finnish GM Westerinen played in 19. The top English participants are Nigel Short and John Speelman who have played in 14 a piece, while the top Aussie is Ian Rogers who has played in 14!

The last number I lost count of, which was the number of tweets I ignored about the Melbourne Storm's win against the West Sydeny Tigers while I was trying to find out why Anish Giri hadn't been playing for Holland at the Olympiad. While obviously happy to see the Storm win, I was even happier to notice a tweet from chessvibes not saying why Giri hasn't been playing, but at least saying that he has finally arrived in Istanbul and will hopefully start helping the Dutch pull themselves up to a respectable position. I'll now go back to Twitter to see if I can find out any more info about this and other chess news matters while sifting through the hundreds of tweets about my other favourite team, West Ham who are currently beating Fulham in the Premiership!

England-France

I am currently sat in my beanbag, writing this while waiting for the live coverage of round 4 of the Olympiad to begin. Tonight I have my English head on, as the classic battle between England and France is being played. Both these teams are outside chances for medals in this Olympiad with France ranked 8th and England ranked 11th at the start of the tournament. Both teams have won all their games, and both have had to overcome some pretty tough opposition. In the previous round, France played Bulgaria who were ranked 10th before the tournament and who fielded the dangerous duo of Topalov and Cheparinov on the top 2 boards. However, Topalov was beaten by French board 1 Maxime Vachier-Legrave and the rest of the games were drawn. England also had an impressive victory in the 3rd round against Cuba (ranked 15th) with 2700+ players Dominguez and Bruzon on the top 2 boards. England's board 1 Adams won against Dominguez, while England also won on board 3 where they have the hugely experienced Nigel Short. With the other games drawn, this was a decisive 3-1 victory. The match has just started, and if either side can pull out a victory, then they will put themselves in great position at the head of the field.

Most of the top teams are near the top, but the big exception is Holland. I'm not sure what is going on here. The Dutch team seem to be missing Anish Giri, but still have 4 players rated above 2600 with the hugely experienced van Wely and Ivan Sokolov on top boards. However, none of their team is currently performing and from a starting rank of 9th they have currently won only 1 of their 3 matches including losing to Venezuela who are ranked a lowly 58th.

However, besides Holland, the top nations are there or thereabouts and this is shown in the 4th round pairings. USA(5)-India(13), Russia(1)-China(6), Azerbaijan(7)-Germany(14), and of course France(8)-England(11). The rest of the top teams are just behind these.

Australia narrowly lost out to Mongolia yesterday and find themselves down the field playing Pakistan, where hopefully they will bounce back up the field. In the 2.5-1.5 loss there was a good win for Max Illingworth on board 4 against a higher rated opponent. Max grabbed some material early on, and held on. There were some nervous moments through the middle of the game, but I get the feeling that Max felt comfortable, and he finished the game off in style.

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 :)

The 40th Chess Olympiad Starts

Yesterday, the first round of the 40th Chess Olympiad in Istanbul took place. There were the usual glitches in transmission, which meant that I didn't get to see any of the games live before I had to sleep. The live site is full of clerical errors, but taking that aside, it seems pretty good coverage. There's a good photo gallery, video coverage from chessTV (who covered the Anand-Gelfand World Championship match), and a great live games display (though the pgn download seems a bit dodgy at the moment....actually, I take that back, the pgn has just downloaded!). To be honest, I'm pretty happy with the coverage so far. It isn't perfect, but it's definitely better than before!

Anyway, the Australian teams started well. The men's team got off to a winning start with a 3-1 victory over Namibia while the Women beat Malta 4-0.  For me the most pleasing thing about these matches were the team compositions as both teams rested their top player. This meant that the men's team had young IM Moulton Ly on board 1, while the women had young WIM Emma Guo on top board. It is a huge responsibility being board 1 for your country (not that I would know about that, but I'm guessing) so I applaud the team captain's, Manual Weeks and Ian Rogers for throwing these youngsters in at the deep end. Apparently, Moulton was in trouble in his game but came through which will do wonders for his confidence.

My country of birth, England were a little unlucky with their first round opponents. Andorra are a team with 1 strong player and a bunch of not so strong player. GM de la Riva on top board may just find himself with a few easy games later in the tournament as the rest of the Andorra team try to help him score some points. Likewise, in round 2 the top pairing sees a potentially awkward pairing for Ukraine who face Qatar with 2 2500+ GM's on the top 2 boards. While this shouldn't really put any problems for the mighty Ukraine team, it is still tough to beat GM's to order. And if all games went to seeding we wouldn't have had the upsets which make the Olympiad so great...such as Russia's Tomashevsky (2730) being held to a draw by William Puntier (2312) of the Dominican Republic. Of course, this wasn't the only upset, but it is always good to see the favourites humbled.

Anyway, congratulations to the Australian teams and good luck today. The men have a tough fight against Norway (who are without Magnus Carlsen, but still pretty solid), while the women have a huge battle against one of the tournament favourites India. And good luck tot he under 16 teams who start their campaigns today. Here are the Australian games from round 1.

Olympiad 2012 Good luck to Australian Teams!

The opening ceremony of the 2012 Chess Olympiad is hours away, with games due to start tomorrow. It promises to be a close fought event with a number of teams who could battle for the medals. I will, of course, be supporting the Aussies (Smerdon, Ly, Wohl, Solomon, Illingworth; women. Caoilli, Guo, Yu, Nguyen, Dekic) though keeping an eye on the English team. Australia has also sent teams to the Youth Olympiad, and I will be following that closely as well, especially as I know many of the kids playing.

For a personal glimpse of the Olympiad, it will be well worth following the blogs of David Smerdon and  Alex Wohl though it may just be just as good to follow the twitter account of the top rated player in the event, Armenia's Levon Aronian!

World number 2 with Australian board 1 (Courtesy of Levon Aronian's Twitter account)