Olympics: And the Winners Are...
Armenia and Ukraine.
In the Men's section, Armenia took four quick draws with Hungary, assuring them clear first while giving Hungary...nothing. China beat the Netherlands 2.5-1.5 to take clear second, a point ahead of the USA and Israel. Israel crushed a persistently out-of-form (except for Kramnik, who didn't play this round) Russia, while the USA drubbed Norway 3.5-.5. Israel defeated the USA in their head-to-head match by a 2.5-1.5 margin, but that wasn't the official tiebreaker and the Americans wound up with the Bronze medal.
In the Women's branch, Ukraine came in first, as expected, Russia second and China third, with a large gap between them and the rest of the field.
I would include the top TPRs and board prizes (maybe - they're determined by percentage, and are thus often won by relatively strong players on bad teams), but that link is malfunctioning at the moment. So I'll leave my readers with the results link and encouragement to go exploring on their own.
In the Men's section, Armenia took four quick draws with Hungary, assuring them clear first while giving Hungary...nothing. China beat the Netherlands 2.5-1.5 to take clear second, a point ahead of the USA and Israel. Israel crushed a persistently out-of-form (except for Kramnik, who didn't play this round) Russia, while the USA drubbed Norway 3.5-.5. Israel defeated the USA in their head-to-head match by a 2.5-1.5 margin, but that wasn't the official tiebreaker and the Americans wound up with the Bronze medal.
In the Women's branch, Ukraine came in first, as expected, Russia second and China third, with a large gap between them and the rest of the field.
I would include the top TPRs and board prizes (maybe - they're determined by percentage, and are thus often won by relatively strong players on bad teams), but that link is malfunctioning at the moment. So I'll leave my readers with the results link and encouragement to go exploring on their own.
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Posted by Dennis Monokroussos on
Sunday June 4, 2006 at 1:57pm
The easy link is up now, and the board prize situation is even worse than I feared - it's just depressing. Only Wang Yue on board 4 was a deserving winner - and how! He had the second best TPR (2837) of the entire Olympiad, only behind "not in my [Topalov's] class" Kramnik and his 2845 TPR on board one.
Other outstanding performances: Bacrot (board 1, 2833), Carlsen (board 1, 2820), Karjakin (board 3, 2798), Bu Xiangzhi (board 1, 2790), Navara (board 1, 2786), Akopian (board 2, 2778) and Aronian (board 1, 2768).
There were other TPRs over 2700 as well - check 'em all out here.