Baku Olympiad

cdeb

Gets underway tomorrow so - live games here.

There's a live diary on the ICU website too

Best of luck to the two Irish teams! Have we any realistic title hopes? Alice O'Gorman, I guess? Is it too early yet for Conor O'Donnell to be looking at an IM performance? His FIDE rating is 2343, so not too far off the 2400 mark anyway.

Tim Harding

Stephen Jessel (2367) needs to gain 33 points to claim his IM because he already has the norms.

Whether Conor has a good chance may depend on how he reacts to his good start/ disappointing second half in the recent EU Youth Ch. If it has toughened him up and inspired him then with the support of other team members, maybe he can do it.
His weak areas are still rook endings and some of his defences with Black (he lost an important game in the Youth Ch playing an inferior line of the Philidor). Maybe Alex can help him there.

Why would you think Alice O'Gorman has a better chance than Diana Mirza of a WIM norm?

Tim Harding

Round 1 pairings for the Open olympiad are up:
https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/42nd-chess-olympiad-baku-2016-open/1/1/1

Ireland will play Mali in match 68.
It's likely that most of the higher-rated teams including Ireland will rest their top boards.
Mali's highest rated player is 2179.

Top matches are: Nigeria v Russia; USA-Andorra; Kosovo-China; Azerbaijan-Zimbabwe.

Women's pairings not available yet.

Team lists have to be declared by 11am local time (8am here)
Play starts noon our time.

cdeb

Tim Harding wrote: »

Why would you think Alice O'Gorman has a better chance than Diana Mirza of a WIM norm?

Alice hasn't any title - so could get the WFM title.

reunion

Diallo, M. 2179 white — — GM Baburin, A. 2487 black
FM Bah, Brema 2053 black— — FM Jessel, S. 2367 white
Toure, Amadou 1899 white — — IM Heidenfeld 2366 black
Diarra, S. black — — FM O`Donnell, C. 2343 white

They have messed up the Luxembourg v Congo boards giving Congo white on all boards.

WCM Mirza, Diana 1948 white — — WGM Calzetta Ruiz 2249 black
O`Gorman, A. 1781 black — — IM Vega Gutierr. 2411 white
WFM Menon Jayadev 1837 white — — IM Matnadze, Ana 2383 black
WFM Kruk, Karina 1766 black — — WIM Aranaz Muril. 2279 white

Tough games for our Female team. Karina has the best chance of a win or a draw as her opponent has had a few bad results lately against 1800ish rated opponents.

checknraise

To get the FM title in the olympiad you just need to score above 65%. If Alice and Diana play well there is a good chance they will be coming back with WFM titles.

Very tough ask for the ladies as Spain are a really tough team. I don't see how Karina has a better shot of pulling off a upset compared to Diana who is playing a lower rated opponent, is significantly higher rated and has white. We shall see what happens!

reunion

checknraise wrote: »

To get the FM title in the olympiad you just need to score above 65%. If Alice and Diana play well there is a good chance they will be coming back with WFM titles.

Very tough ask for the ladies as Spain are a really tough team. I don't see how Karina has a better shot of pulling off a upset compared to Diana who is playing a lower rated opponent, is significantly higher rated and has white. We shall see what happens!

I presume that's the WFM title if you get a score of 65%?

I was going off recent forms - Diana's opponent has been performing quite well recently and hasn't lost or drawn many games with players sub 2000 whereas Karina's opponent has had a number of draws and losses against sub 2000 opponents.

Ideally Diana, Alice, Poornima and Karina would get a win or even a draw!

Good luck to both teams anyway!

cdeb

Actually, I thought Diana was a WFM already, but she's only a WCM.

So yeah, I guess both can target the WFM alright.

What's the WCM requirements - is it a 50% score?

Is there no rule about board order in the Olympiad? Obviously that Spain team wouldn't be allowed in the Leinster leagues - breach of the 150 point rule.

Tim Harding

cdeb wrote: »

Is there no rule about board order in the Olympiad? Obviously that Spain team wouldn't be allowed in the Leinster leagues - breach of the 150 point rule.

You can declare your team in whatever order you like at the captains' meeting but it cannot be changed subsequently. As far as I know all FIDE team events (including our NCC, European Club Cup, Senior teams) have this rule.

reunion

cdeb wrote: »

Actually, I thought Diana was a WFM already, but she's only a WCM.

So yeah, I guess both can target the WFM alright.

What's the WCM requirements - is it a 50% score?

Is there no rule about board order in the Olympiad? Obviously that Spain team wouldn't be allowed in the Leinster leagues - breach of the 150 point rule.

fide rules wrote:

6.3.8.4 Fixed Board Order (FBO)
See articles 1.172 - 1.174 and 3.7. Not later than 20 hours before the
start of round 1, the players in each team must be listed in a fixed board
order by their captain. The FBO cannot be changed during the
tournament.

https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/chess_olympiad_regulations.pdf

cdeb

Cheers.

So what would be the logic in Spain putting their weakest player on top board for the whole tournament? She's not an up-and-coming junior. I presume they're not sandbagging and trying to eke out a couple more match wins? The next two players certainly are a long way away from another title, even if they get a GM norm here.

Tim Harding

cdeb wrote: »

Actually, I thought Diana was a WFM already, but she's only a WCM.

So yeah, I guess both can target the WFM alright.

What's the WCM requirements - is it a 50% score?

Don't put any limit on what Diana Mirza should aim for: she should chase WIM and could achieve it with a bit of luck. This is already her second Olympiad and top board makes it a great opportunity for a double norm.

Diana is the first home-grown player (or almost home-grown) who is approaching the level of the strongest squad of female players Ireland had in the late 1970s/early 1980s: Hilary Healy, Ann Delaney and April Cronin in particular.

If Diana falls short then WFM will come her way soon I think, if not at this event. Alice O'Gorman is obviously very talented too but younger and less experienced so WFM would be a reasonable target for her.

I think WCM is dependent upon reaching a certain rating level at some point - maybe 1900? For men (CM title) it is 2200 but a lot of our players who have been over 2200 have not claimed it.

reunion

Live stream started - here

cdeb

Liveboards for the Open here.

And for the Women's tournament here

Don't see how to link in the Ireland matches though. But click into any match, and then under the top board is a drop-down menu asking you to select a match - so you can flick back and forth between games easily enough.

cdeb

Also, bit mad there's no Armenia this year - though of course their relations with Azerbaijan are well known...

The US have to have a great chance of a first (proper) title since the war.

cdeb

Liveboards showing 1-0 results for both Jessel and O'Donnell?

Is that an error, or were the opponents not present at the start?

Pain in the hole of a way to start an Olympiad if so.

cdeb

Strange stuff going on across the boards. Grischuk seems to have gotten a walkover as well for Russia. Denmark have already beaten Malawi 4-0, but only two boards are showing on the live view - one a walkover, and the other a resignation after 7 moves for no particularly obvious reason (unless in protest?)

Hard to tell if the live boards aren't working properly, or if a lot of players have been excluded from the hall (seem to recall something similar happening last time) or what's going on at all.

cdeb

And a win for Estonia on board 1 against Afghanistan - Estonia's 2501 not surprisingly overcoming Afghanistan's 1655. Another who've put their weakest player on board 1, and I'd say he's in for a long week and a bit!

Sierra Leone, Mexico and Senegal have also lost 4-0, while Haiti and Gambia are 3-0 down - most, but not all, the boards are down as walkovers, so if that's true, it seems like lots of problems actually getting into the venue. But no such issues in the Women's tournament, strangely.

cdeb

3-0 Ireland; a win for Babs it seems. No moves showing though.

Just Heidenfeld left now. We must presume!

Edit - 4-0 showing now.

Tim Harding

cdeb wrote: »

Also, bit mad there's no Armenia this year - though of course their relations with Azerbaijan are well known...

The US have to have a great chance of a first (proper) title since the war.

Ireland seem to have won 4-0 in 90 minutes but no details of moves.

Well the USA did win the boycotted olympiad of 1976 and that's still a proper title in my view.

They may win this year but China are even stronger than two years ago (the in-form Li Chao replacing Ni Hua). It could come down to the head-to-head matches between these two countries and the other major contenders, who I take to be Russia and India, with several other countries averaging over 2650.

cdeb

Ireland 0-2 Spain in the Women's now - but Alice O'Gorman is a pawn and an exchange up against her 2400-rated opponent. Would be an amazing result if she can take the win.

Diana in an endgame of R+3 v B+5 which the bar beside the board says is level, but the computer analysis says is just lost (and indeed, I was wondering how she was going to hold before I saw the other analysis!)

I think the reliability of the computer analysis was an issue last time, and seems to be so again this time. (And I know it's better to look at the game rather than the "score"...)

Past_Pawn_99

cdeb wrote: »

I think the reliability of the computer analysis was an issue last time, and seems to be so again this time. (And I know it's better to look at the game rather than the "score"...)

The chess24 engine analysis always seems to be bad/incorrect

Tim Harding

Past_Pawn_99 wrote: »

The chess24 engine analysis always seems to be bad/incorrect

I think the engine analysis may differ between the mobile app and the website, the latter being more reliable - with the proviso that analysis stops when the next move is made so the searches/assessments are deeper when one player has a long think and are usually hopeless in time scrambles.

Alice (if the online clock times are right) spoiled her winning position in the last 9 or 10 moves before the time control; she had about there minutes plus increment. Her Qb7 was terribly panicky and she was lost after that.

It's a shame but this is all a great learning experience for the teenagers.

There were definitely some teething problems with the live transmission today. It looked at one time as if England was losing to the Braille team but it turned out that the names on boards 1-4 had been reversed and all the colours were wrong.

So we await confirmation on whether the Mali team did not show up or just failed to get through security before the 15 minutes grace period had elapsed. The English Chess Forum is reporting a lot of forfeits and confusion today.

Tim Harding

Tomorrow in round 2:

OPEN Ireland v France in match 8, should be fascinating to watch. It will help them that Maze knows some of our players.
But (afterthought) maybe it helps us more that Stephen Jessel knows the French players.

Top ten matches:
1 1 RUS Russia 4 2 : 2 4 Turkmenistan TKM 62
2 63 SCO Scotland 4 2 : 2 4 United States of America USA 2
3 3 CHN China 4 2 : 2 4 Belgium BEL 64
4 65 MKD FYROM 4 2 : 2 4 Azerbaijan 1 AZE 4
5 66 ALB Albania 4 2 : 2 4 Ukraine UKR 5
6 67 INA Indonesia 4 2 : 2 4 England ENG 6
7 7 POL Poland 4 2 : 2 4 United Arab Emirates UAE 68
8 69 IRL Ireland 4 2 : 2 4 France FRA 8
9 9 IND India 4 2 : 2 4 Costa Rica CRC 70
10 11 NED Netherlands 4 2 : 2 4 ICCD

Our women's team play Pakistan with Black on odd numbered boards.

eclipsechaser

I understand that the Irish Open team got a walk-over earlier today.

cdeb

Suggestion on the ICU website is that Mali ultimately couldn't afford to travel. What on earth were they in the draw for if that's the case? Surely each country registers on arrival, and countries who haven't registered (i.e. not turned up) are excluded from the draw?

cdeb

Underway for round 2 so.

Diana sitting this one out; Pakistan have an 1100 on board 2, so we should be capable of a good win here, although there's only 200 points between us on 1 and 3, so wouldn't be expecting a 4-0 necessarily.

Conor O'Donnell sitting out for the Open team against France. Jessel is up against Maze.

Scotland v USA on the second board.

cdeb

First round report on chess.com; seems credits the various defaults to a mixture of teams not being able to afford to travel, potential issues with visas on arrival and teammates being delayed, meaning teams were stuck with fewer than the three players required to actually play.

All a bit unsatisfactory really, but hard to know whose fault it all is.

pawntof4

I see Alex Lopex published a nice video on the first round.

Tim Harding

cdeb wrote: »

Suggestion on the ICU website is that Mali ultimately couldn't afford to travel. What on earth were they in the draw for if that's the case? Surely each country registers on arrival, and countries who haven't registered (i.e. not turned up) are excluded from the draw?

At the FIDE World Senior Team Championships it was made very clear to everyone who entered that they must send a representative to the Captains' Meeting who would there fill in the form with the board order. If it was not done the team would not be in the first round draw.
They should also do this for the Olympiad.

cdeb

Seems perfectly sensible.

Babs playing a stormer it seems; B, N+3 each against Vachier-Legrange afer move 30. Looks dead level to my eyes, and indeed to the "unreliable" computer. Any more experienced judgments on his position though? Any compensating factors for Legrange? Or is Babs set for a great result against the world number two?

Tim Harding

cdeb wrote: »

Babs playing a stormer it seems; B, N+3 each against Vachier-Legrange afer move 30. Looks dead level to my eyes, and indeed to the "unreliable" computer. Any more experienced judgments on his position though? Any compensating factors for Legrange? Or is Babs set for a great result against the world number two?

Alex certainly has excellent drawing chances, it would be a dead draw without the knights. The second half of his opponent's name is not "Legrange", it's "Lagrave". He generally answers to "MVL".

cdeb

Oops! He's on the liveboards as Vachier-Lagr. I blame ZZ Top for the rest of my mistake.

Edit - not sure what the story with Jessel's game is; computer showing his flag falling against Maze, but I guess we have to presume that he's in big time trouble at least. Only Heidenfeld in trouble so far though - two pawns down - but a decent showing elsewhere all things considered.

Big advantages on the top two boards for the Women against Pakistan; should be able to take the match win from here.

cdeb

Lagrave now offering Babs the chance to swap his (Babs') knight for MVL's bishop - surely an admission that Lagrave has no more winning potential?

Edit - and Babs declines. Shows what I know!

Tim Harding

cdeb wrote: »

Lagrave now offering Babs the chance to swap his (Babs') knight for MVL's bishop - surely an admission that Lagrave has no more winning potential?

Edit - and Babs declines. Shows what I know!

Jessel has lost; Heidenfeld and Daly are losing according to the online engine (and my quick view of the board). Alex probably wants to keep the B of opp. situation and bring his N to d3.
First he has swapped a pair of pawns and they have now made the time control. AND THEY HAVE DRAWN!

Scotland are playing USA. Nakamura has beaten John Shaw but Shankland could be in trouble against Colin McNab.

Alice O'Gorman has won.

cdeb

Draw agreed!

Well done Babs.

One of our greatest results in Olympiad history? Collins' draw v Grischuk - then world number 8 I think - up there too. Think he had black as well.

Maze got the better of Jessel, and we're struggling but not lost in the other two.

Meanwhile, Alice has won against Pakistan, Poornima is a piece up and much better anyway and we should pick up another half point on the other two anyway.

Edit - actually, Mark seems to be on the wrong end of a king hunt now, so looks lost alright.

Tim Harding

Good team selection strategy today I think, to let Colm Daly take the hit and not damage Conor's confidence with an early loss.
The game he did not play yesterday could be a blessing in disguise if he gets IM norm chances because it would have dragged down his opponent average rating. He can get a norm with suitable opponent mix and good results if he plays 8 of the remaining nine rounds:

For a 9 round tournament, if a player has just 8 games because of a forfeit or Bye, but he has met the correct mix of opponents in those games, then if he has a title result in 8 games, it counts as an 8 game norm.

https://www.fide.com/fide/handbook.html?id=174&view=article

Ballynafeigh Chess

I must say Alex was absolutely outstanding, a superb result achieved through superb play .... I offer a round of applause sir!

Tim Harding

Ballynafeigh Chess wrote: »

I must say Alex was absolutely outstanding, a superb result achieved through superb play .... I offer a round of applause sir!

Absolutely, to draw with the World 2 is a tremendous result.

Our women's team will score 3.5.
Unfortunately Geraoirdin missed a neat win.
In this position:
WHITE Kb1, Rb7; pawns a4, d4, f4, h5
BLACK Ke8, Rd2; pawns a6, e6
Here 63...Rh2 keeps some drawing chances but Black (who has just exchanged N for B on d4) played 63...Rxd4??

Now 64 h6 is absolutely killing but White played 64 Rb6? which very quickly and forcibly simplifies to a theoretical draw of R and h-pawn v R with the defending K well placed.

Tim Harding

Round 3 pairings. Open: Bolivia-Ireland; Women: Algeria-Ireland.

Chance for a big win and some momentum for Conor & co, I hope.

Algeria have five WIMs but this could be a winnable match for us if we play well.

Joedryan

Disappointed with the Irish play today, we seemed to go under too easy, but early days.

Tim Harding

Mark Heidenfeld and Karina Kruk are rested today.

Some interesting match-ups in round 3 starting at noon IST.

Bologan (well-known author of openings books) v Karjakin
Mamedyarov (local hero) v Rapport (on my fantasy team - go Richard!!)
Anish Giri v Le Quang Liem (Vietnamese GM)

In the Women's Olympiad Hou Yifan plays today to the relief of her supporters on fantasy teams.
An interesting pairing is USA-Ukraine,
where board 1 is Irina Krush v Anna Muzychuk
and board 2 is Nazi Paikidze (current US champion: why doesn't she change her name?, even though she pronounces it Na-zee) v ex-world champion Mariya Muzychuk.

In case anyone missed it, yesterday's big shock was the Philippines women defeating Georgia whose great tradition (Gaprindashvili, Chiburdanidze etc) seems to be in decline.

cdeb

Santeramo plays as well - huzzah!

Though she's only rated 2001; don't know why I thought she was a lot higher.

Below Le Quang Liem on the Vietnamese team v Holland is GM Nguyen on 2, GM Nguyen on 3 and FM Nguyen on 4. In the Women's competition, China play Vietnam, so Hou Yifan plays Pham - married to Nguyen on the men's team - while Vietnam also have WGM Nguyen on 3 and WGM Nguyen on 4.

Every Nguyen, incl Mrs Nguyen, is on 2/2 across the Vietnamese teams. Every non-Nguyen has dropped points.

Tim Harding

Alice O'Gorman has lost with White. Outplayed from the opening by 2043 opponent it seems.

2bts

10 minutes of event commentary of Baburin Vs MVL -> minutes 44-54 on http://www1.bakuchessolympiad.com/videos/114#lg=1&slide=0

cdeb

Big turnaround in Poornima's game; she was in big trouble, but white missed the strong 21. h5 and instead went in for a line where she ended up losing a queen for rook and two pawns. Not sure did she miss the queen getting trapped at the end or what, but Poornima is better there now. Long way to go of course, and both players in time trouble.

cdeb

Poornima reaches the time control, which was really the only danger there, and should now convert from Q for R up.

Gearóidín can presumably hold her opposite colour bishop endgame? A pawn down in B+3 v B+2.

In that case, Diana's result will be the team's result too. So a good chance of a minor upset here.

Edit - Gearóidín has taken the draw. So ½-1½ down, with surely a win for Poornima to come.

Tim Harding

The result service from Baku is a bit unreliable as 20 minutes after Wesley So (surely?) won, it is still showing his game as a draw. It is showing Ireland leading 2-1 (win for Stephen Jessel in a strange looking final position) with Colm Daly needing to draw an equal ending to win the match. We all know how much Colm loves draws so let's hope he doesn't mess up.

It looks as if we should at least draw the women's match also. Geraoirdin has drawn, Poornima has won Q for R and Diana now has a slight advantage with Q, R and 3 pawns each. But games with that material balance can easily go wrong (or right).

LATER: Now R and 2 pawns each because Diana exchanged queens, maybe to be safe but extinguishing her own chances of winning.. White has a passed pawn on b3 which gives any advantage there may be; Diana has 2-1 on the kingside (no passed pawn) so needs to be a little careful.

cdeb

Diana looking like a draw now I'd say; 43 ... QxP would have been better than the played 43. ... RxP, because then white can't restore material balance with QxP as in the game because the rook is hanging. But would be a long way to convert from Q, R+3 v Q, R+2 anyway.

As it is, R+2 each.

Tim Harding

Colm's opponent playing the ending weakly; definite chances of a win for us now.

cdeb

53. Bh5! is nice from Colm.

And intereting that on the previous move, the computer didn't place it in its top three at all. Top 53. Nc6 (+3.4), with 53. Bg4+ (+1.7) and 53. Bc2 (+1.4) after that. But once 53. Bh5 is played, the computer evaluates it as +5.1!

So the computers really are rather weak here, but maybe that's no harm as it might encourage human players to challenge them with their own evaluation.