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?