The Chess Mind

...at least so far.

First, the overall standings: Russia started with two 4-0 whitewashes, and have continued quite successfully in the meantime, as contenders are already facing each other. Speaking of contenders, Russia's opponent in round 5 will be the very strong Armenian team, starring world number 3 or 4 Levon Aronian and 1999 FIDE k.o. runner-up Vladimir Akopian.

Both teams have 13.5 (out of 16), half a point ahead of the Netherlands and a full point ahead of Uzbekistan (led by Kasimdzhanov). Further back, but not too much further back, are most of the usual suspects, including Ukraine (12), India, China and the US (11.5). Surprising underachievers thus far are France with 10 and England with 9.5, but it's early yet; there are nine rounds to go.

As for the other headline, Kramnik came out with a bang in round 3, easily defeating 2005 Dortmund winner Arkadij Naiditsch of Germany with the White pieces. (Replay the game, with my brief comments, here.) Round 4 wasn't a win, but his hard-fought draw with Black against Bu Xiangzhi of China offered continued hope for a return to form. This next round, with him taking on Aronian, will be a real test of his form and preparation - hopefully there won't be any quick handshakes here.

Lots of fun games in today's round, which left the standings pretty much where they were coming in. Co-leaders Russia and Armenia (15.5 apiece) drew their match, while closest followers Holland (15) and Uzbekistan (14.5) did the same. No team has caught the Uzbeks for fourth, but seven teams (Bulgaria, Ukraine, Spain, Belarus, the U.S., Iran (!!) and Sweden) are just half a point behind (at 14, obviously). (Full standings here.)

On the women's side of the event, Russia leads with 12.5 (for some unobvious reason, the women play three-board matches instead of four, so their point totals are correspondingly lower), Ukraine has 12, Hungary 11.5 and eight teams (including the U.S.) have 11. Surprisingly, traditional powers China and Georgia are part of a tie for 14th-19th places, with just 10 points. (Full results here.)

Now to the games I've chosen to attach. The first is from the Russia-Armenia match, and it shows Kramnik 2.0 continuing to display excellent form, as he dispatched Aronian in convincing style.

Next, an amusing pair of games from the U.S. - Georgia match, in which both Kamsky and Nakamura use the Slav line Kamsky used, unsuccessfully, in the penultimate round of the MTel Masters against Topalov. Kamsky won, Nakamura lost.

After that, I present the game Navara-Kozul, mainly because it features a nice concluding combination - a bit of tactics practice for those in need of a puzzle fix.

Next up: the drawn game Kozlov (2290) against Adams (2720), just to provide a reminder that almost anything is possible in chess.

Finally, two insane games (and then one of my own): Mitkov-Lautier and Sammalvuo-Gausel. In the first game, Mitkov turns an offbeat Sicilian into a goofy sort of King's Gambit, successfully winds his way through the complications against his elite opponent, only to slip up and let Lautier escape the lost ending with a draw.

Even stranger and definitely more amusing was Sammalvuo-Gausel. White plays the stodgy Spanish Four Knights, and against the current antidote 4...Bd6 the Finnish player attempted to blast his opponent off the board with 5.g4!? a6 6.Bc4 Bc5 7.Ng5(?). He was probably hoping for a quick game; if so, he got his wish - though not the desired result. It's a funny game, and see the next game as a sort of "appendix", where I produced a(n almost) new g4 idea that turned out well.

The games are available here.

From the game Stefanova-Zatonskih in round 5; it's Black to make her 34th move:



White's up the exchange, but Black has compensation. The more minor bit of compensation is the hanging d-pawn; the more significant the relatively weak White king. Perhaps the U.S. women's champ was in time pressure, but she was able to find and execute an elegant drawing combination. What was it, and was there anything better?

Click here for the answers.

Armenia, thanks to Aronian and especially Akopian (see below), are in first place with 24 points (out of a possible 32). Fully two points back are the Russian and Ukrainian teams, who are in turn just half a point ahead of China, Georgia, the USA and France. Meanwhile, on the women's side, Russia leads with 19 (of 24), half a point ahead of Ukraine with 18.5 and two points ahead of the USA and China.

Meanwhile, with a hat tip to ChessToday, here are the top 10 individual results so far at the Olympiad, by rating:

Karjakin (Ukraine, board 3, 5.5/6) 2927
Navara (Czech Republic, board 1, 6/7) 2916
Kramnik (Russia, board 1, 4/5) 2914
Laznicka (Czech Republic, board 4, 6.5/7) 2894
Akopian (Armenia, board 2, 6/7) 2864
A. Zhigalko (Belarus, board 5, 5.5/6) 2847
Iuldachev (Uzbekistan, board 5, 4.5/5) 2825
Sargissian (Armenia, board 5, 7/8) 2817
Bu Xiangzhi (China, board 1, 5/7) 2806
Kasimdzhanov (Uzbekistan, board 1, 3.5/5) 2803

Some brief comments. First, I'm not surprised to see Karjakin doing so well, as with only minor setbacks in his career thus far he has been making dazzling progress year after year. It seems like he's been around forever, but he's still only 16 years old. Navara is another talented youngster (21 years old), and while Kramnik's a ripe "old" man of 30, it's nice to see him back and playing well.

The fourth player, Viktor Laznicka, is one I had never even heard of until I saw this list! "Just" one more 17-year old grandmaster, but if he keeps up this sort of performance, he'll emerge into the mainstream soon. I'd also like to call attention to now ex-prodigy Bu Xiangzhi, erstwhile owner of the youngest-ever GM title. While his FIDE rating is an impressive 2645, his progress seems to have been rather slow the last few years, so it's nice to see him making another jump. (His results so far include draws with Kramnik and Anand, and a win over Kamsky.)

With just one round remaining in the Olympiad, Armenia has just about clinched first place in the "Men's" division, while Ukraine has more or less achieved the same in the Women's half. Here are the relevant standings and last round pairings:

Men's Standings:

1. Armenia 34
2. China 31.5
3. Russia 31
4-5. France, Hungary 30.5
6. Israel 30
7-9. USA, Netherlands, Bulgaria 29.5

Men's Pairings:

Armenia-Hungary
China-Netherlands
Russia-Israel
Bulgaria-France
USA-Norway

Women's Standings:

1. Ukraine 28
2. Russia 26
3. China 25
4. USA 23
5. Armenia 22.5

Women's Pairings:

Ukraine-Armenia
India-Russia
China-Belarus
Germany-USA

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.