Saturday 1 September 2012

Olympiad Update ... Reality & Fantasy ...

So the chess Olympiad has finally started in Turkey.
Australia have had a reasonable start to the event, with the Open team performing slightly above their seeding, while the Women's team are slightly below their seeding.
The brief summary of their results so far is as follows:

Open 
Round 1: 3-1 win against Namibia
Round 2: 2-2 draw with Norway
Round 3: 1.5-2.5 loss against Mongolia
Round 4: 2.5-1.5 win against Pakistan
Round 5: 2.5-1.5 win against Zambia
Although the matches have been close, the main score is the match score (ie: overall win or loss), with the game points only being used for countback purposes, so Australia are well positioned with a 3-1-1 record.
Individually, results are as follows:
David Smerdon 2.5/4
Moulthun Ly 2.5/4
Aleks Wohl 0.5/3
Stephen Solomon 2.5/4
Max Illingworth  3.5/5

Women 
Round 1: 4-0 win against Malta
Round 2: 0.5-3.5 loss against India
Round 3: 1.5-2.5 loss against Macedonia (AKA: FYROM)
Round 4: 3.5-0.5 win against Nicaragua
Round 5: 0-4 loss against Romania
The matches have for the most part been far more one-sided, as Australia seems to be doing the Swiss yo-yo, although the loss to Macedonia would be a little disappointing.
Individually, results are as follows:
Arianne Caoili 2/4
Emma Guo 1.5/4
Sally Yu 1/4
Giang Nguyen 2/4
Biljana Dekic 3/4

After today's round there is a rest day, so hopefully the team can recuperate from the illnesses they are suffering, at least according to David Smerdon's blog, and finish off strongly!

The Fantasy Chess Olympiad, on the other hand, has started off fantastically for me! After round 4, I am sitting in =10th place (out of 235 entries) with 106 points (see my previous post for the explanation of the scoring).
Some things have turned out (somewhat fortuitously in a way) in my favour so far:
Alexander Grischuk is not only scoring well, but he's actually playing on board 2 of the Russian team (so I actually have two board 2 players, rather than a board 2 & 3);
Andrei Volokitin is also crushing his opponents (starting with 4/4) and is in fact playing board 3 for the Ukraine team, not the board 4 that I have him selected as;
Anish Giri (not in my team) has had some passport/visa related issues, so has only just arrived in Turkey for the Olympiad, playing his first game in round 5, which has meant that Daniel Stellwagen has played all four rounds (and even played round 5), in spite of some early poor form;
Yelena Dembo is another in my team who is not playing on the initially allocated board, playing board 1 for Greece, rather than the board 3 as selected;
Overall (up to the end of round 4), there have only been 3 DNPs in my team, as well as only 2 individual losses, which is fantastic for accumulating points (which is what the competition is about).

The competition organisers have also started a 'Week 2' competition, where you can select another fantasy team in the same way as the main competition, but you can select the team with some form on the board, and hopefully come up with a better team overall.

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