Chess Olympiad: Round 1 LIVE |
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| Tuesday, 28 August 2012 | ||||||||||||||||
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 17:29 Three games have ended already. The rating favorites are not taking prisoners! 17:15 All the Russian players seem to be doing fine so far: advantage with White; at least equality with Black. Only Dmitry Jakovenko has a double-edged position with opposite-side castles. 17:00 So far only about 10 moves have been made on the average. Naturally, this is home preparation for most of the players. 16:50 World Rapid Chess Champion Sergey Karjakin is the only seated Russian player. Btw, he is wearing the logo of his new personal sponsor on his coat.  16:45 Ex-Women's World Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk has an intimidating look:  16:40 Let's have a little contest: who of the top-10 favorites will win their match first? Will there be an upset (i.e. a draw or loss) by a top-10 team? 16:35 Kosintseva Tatiana:  16:25 The playing hall:  16:17 For those of you who are not familiar with chess engines: below each board there is a certain number (positive or negative). It is a computer evaluation of how good or bad the position is for White. +1 means that White is basically a pawn ahead. -3 means that Black has an extra knight. Of course, chess engines count not only the pieces, but all the factors. In other words, an advantage of about 0.7 pawn usually means that the player has a serious advantage; over 1.5 pawns - the position is winning. 16:12 Finally! Eveything is starting to work as intended! 16:00 The "live games" link seems to be working, but there is no indication of players so far. Let's hope it will be fixed asap! 15:00 The official website of the Chess Olympiad supports 6 languages. Take your time to check out any details that you are interested in. The games will start in an hour. 14: 30 Take a look at the flag-bearers present at the Opening Ceremony that took place yesterday. There was a spectacular presentation of the hosts, performances, a lecture on chess history:   12:30 The pairings are available. Grandmasters Grischuk, Karjakin, Tomashevsky and Jakovenko will be playing two IMs and two FMs from the Dominican Republic. Ex-World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik is taking a holiday. In the women's section Russia is playing vs. Bolivia. The difference in chess skill is even more obvious: 400-500 points difference. The Russian girls are supposed to score 0.92 points, so a victory gives them just 0.8 ratings points, while a different result can seriously spoil their ratings. Board #3, Nadezhda Kosintseva, is taking a day off. What are your predictions for the scores in the matches? 8:00 Msc Dear readers, I am glad to welcome you in our special live blog post dedicated to the Chess Olympiad. Let's follow the games and discuss the event. This is chess author and candidate master Peter Zhdanov. The host of the blog, grandmaster and reigning Russian Women's Chess Champion Natalia Pogonina is currently in Istanbul playing for Team Russia. So, there are 158 teams in the men's section and 128 in the women's competition. USSR used to win one Olympiad after the other. A silver medal (for example, in 1978 Yugoslavia won gold) was considered to be a terrible disgrace. After the breakup of the Soviet Empire Russia went on to win 6 more Olympiads, but then the run came to a halt. Since 2002 other teams have been getting gold. The women's team is somewhat more successful - they are the reigning champions. What are the reasons for this? Is Russia, like some critics say, a degrading chess giant? In my opinion, the situation is more complicated. First of all, most of the world's elite players still hail from the former Soviet Union. However, many of them are now direct competitiors of the Russian grandmasters. Secondly, chess has become more popular in the world. It is now a professional sport. Previously many teams were composed of amateurs who had a day job and loved playing chess as a hobby. Nowadays the leading teams are composed of professionals, so the competition is tougher. Thirdly, computers and the Internet have revolutionized chess and completely changed the approach to preparation. Now the legendary Soviet chess school is not a secret rocket science anymore - one can hire coaches from the Soviet Union and/or access many interactive courses online, play games on the Internet, etc. In other words, Russia has partially lost its edge in training methodology. Nonetheless, even nowadays Russia remains the world's #1 chess superpower. Back to the Olympiad. 11 exciting rounds are ahead. In each match two team points are at stake (2 for a win, 1 for a draw). The team that earns the most team points at the end of the event wins. The first tie-break score is individual points. Each team has four main and one reserve players. Four of them are taking part in each round. Thus, a team can theoretically score up to 22 team points and 44 board points. The reigning champion (Ukraine) won the Olympiad in 2010 with 19 team points. The women's champion (Russia) crushed all the opponents - 22 points! Key match-ups in the Open section:
Key match-ups in the women's section:
Today the rating favorites are facing relatively unsophisticated opponents, but we can still expect some upsets. Sometimes amateurs don't have enough practice in international events, so they play each other and remain underrated. Also, they are exceptionally motivated to beat one of the legends - that can be a lifetime experience. Let's see if some of them will succeed in doing so... 
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