Hello everyone, the picture of the girl that you all see is Luzia Pires (courtesy of David Llada), the legend from the third round who beat a WIM in 8 moves. I would like to offer an apology, I made an omission yesterday that I would like to clear up today. In what could possibly be the shortest victory in the history of the Olympiad someone in the women’s section fell into this ridiculous trap:
We still aren’t sure what the deal is with this game and we may never find out. Many on twitter had commented that they believe that something fishy had occurred (collusion, revenge, losing on purpose, etc…). More than a few people on twitter had called for the expulsion of the player who played black. I don’t have an answer for you but I will say that I think this quality of chess is absurd and that in the future they should institute some sort of rating minimum and try and vet the players somehow. Everyone plays a bad game from time to time (some more frequently than others) but it requires real talent to lose in 3 moves. Enough of this garbage chess, let’s move on to the topics that we all care about.
Top 5 Teams:
We welcome the unlikely team from Kazakhstan to the top five for the first time. Amusingly the Norwegian second team is now ranked 19th, which is a full 19 places ahead of the first Norwegian team.
| Rank | SNo | Country | Games | + | = | – | TB1 | TB2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 8 | Azerbaijan | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 82.0 |
| 2 | 29 | Serbia | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 77.0 |
| 3 | 49 | Kazakhstan | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 73.5 |
| 4 | 18 | Bulgaria | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 71.0 |
| 5 | 13 | Cuba | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 69.0 |
Team Upsets:
- Serbia drew with Azerbaijan
- Bulgaria drew with Russia
- The Netherlands drew with China
- Uzbekistan defeated the Ukraine 2.5 – 1.5
- Cuba defeated Israel 2.5 – 1.5
Rivalries:
This round saw what is perhaps the biggest and most heated rivalry in all of chess: Kramnik vs Topalov. There is some serious bad blood between these two after their World Championship match later dubbed “Toiletgate”.
| Games Played | Country | Name | Rating | Score | Country | Name | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 92 | BUL | Topalov | 2772 | 52.0 – 40.0 | RUS | Kramnik | 2760 |
| 72 | NOR | Carlsen | 2877 | 36.0 – 36.0 | ARM | Aronian | 2805 |
| 21 | UKR | Ivanchuk | 2744 | 9.5 – 11.5 | UZB | Kasimdzhanov | 2700 |
| 18 | HUN | Leko | 2740 | 12.0 – 6.0 | ESP | Vallejo Pons | 2698 |
| 14 | CUB | Dominguez | 2760 | 6.0 – 8.0 | ISR | Gelfand | 2753 |
| 6 | NED | Giri | 2745 | 3.5 – 2.5 | CHN | Yue | 2718 |
| 5 | BLR | Zhigalko | 2678 | 3.5 – 1.5 | AUT | Ragger | 2644 |
| 5 | ARM | Movsesian | 2672 | 2.0 – 3.0 | NOR | Hammer | 2628 |
Perfect Scores:
It is amazing that anyone still has a perfect score; but it is a true testament to Iotov for defeating Karjakin with black which was the reason Bulgaria didn’t lose the match with Russia. This guy is on FIRE!
You may notice that there is a sub 1900 player on the list; he also appears on my list of upsets for his victory this past round over an FM rated 300 points higher than him. Kudos to you Lee Jun Hyeok!
| Ranking | Games | Country | Title | Name | Rating | Score | % | Board | Perf. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | BUL | GM | Iotov | 2553 | 5.0/5.0 | 100 | 3 | 3277 |
| 2 | 4 | MKD | GM | Svetushkin | 2547 | 4.0/4.0 | 100 | 2 | 3169 |
| 3 | 4 | UKR | GM | Moiseenko | 2707 | 4.0/4.0 | 100 | 5 | 3176 |
| 4 | 4 | USA | GM | Shankland | 2624 | 4.0/4.0 | 100 | 5 | 3105 |
| 5 | 4 | KOR | N/A | Lee Jun Hyeok | 1884 | 4.0/4.0 | 100 | 5 | 2377 |
5 comments for “Tromso Olympiad Recap: Rd. 5”