Chennai Olympiad

Ireland are playing the Maldives (seed 153) in match 59. The top four are playing, resting Mark Heidenfeld.

(Possibly he reached Chennai late as the organisers' spreadsheet for checking teams yesterday showed only four members of the male team had arrived.)

Maldives have two FMs and one CM.

The Irish women's team play match 51 against Myanmar. Trisha is rested.

None of the Burmese players in action against Ireland have a FIDE rating but they are seeded 133 because their declared board 4 is rated 1979 and seeding is determined by the average of the four highest rated players, counting unrated players as 1000, so their average was calculated as 1245.

We have Black on the odd numbered boards in both matches.

Play can be followed from 1030 on various platforms including my preferred chess24 where Peter Svidler and Peter Leko will be commentating.

On the FIDE site, although the result on Lara's board keeps showing she lost there is a list of results on the left which shows she won, much more plausible I think. Especially as it was showing her opponent won from very early on. In the one game that was broadcast the Myanmar player looked like a beginner, losing both her knights with White inside eight moves.

I think this was the well-known issue with the DGT Livechess software that a board sometimes tries to carry forward the result from the previous time it was used. If the operator doesn't check and reset the field in the form before the new game starts, it keeps showing the old result until the game is over and it's possible to set the correct result.

So eight wins for Ireland today. Conor seems to have had the trickiest game.

Indeed, in the women's olympiad, 71 teams scored 4-0, but that includes Scotland whose opponents (Rwanda) were expected but didn't appear. This was despite the best efforts of Alex Holowczak and his team to apparently pairings are done on the basis of match points and initial rankings. Chad therefore got a bye unnecessarily and are the only team on 1 match point.

In round 2 Rwanda are not paired, so no bye. There are four Open teams and six Women's teams missing, presumably due to visa issues. All the absent countries are African apart from Pakistan (in both tournaments) who of course also have issues with India.

Someone who is usually well-informed is saying on on the English forum that round 2 pairings will be first quarter versus second and third quarter versus fourth. This should reduce mismatches and make title norms more attainable.

Tomorrow in match 12 Ireland play Hungary who dropped half a point to Panama. Presumably our top four will play.

The Irish men's team will meet Iran in match 13, Black on odd numbered boards again, which I think suits us because it will give Alex the Black pieces and probably Conor and Tarun will play White. I expect Mark to be held back until round 3.

In the Open olympiad there were 92 whitewashes. Most prominent failures were Levon Aronian who, in his first game for USA after defecting from Armenia, sacrificed the exchange for very little and grovelled to move 41 where his 2315-rated opponent accepted his draw offer. Not many people will feel sorry for Aronian, I think. One of the Norwegians was being crushed out of the opening but also got a draw when his opponent, having missed the killer move, forced a repetition.

That's for cdeb to answer I think. Why not start a new thread?

At the olympiad, our Open team seems to have had a comfortable 4-0 win in round 3.

Tomorrow in round 4 they play Germany who somewhat somewhat surprisingly went down to Austria, losing boards 3 and 4. The German top board, their teenage star Vincent Keymer, has still not played a round. Maybe we shall see him tomorrow, or has he not arrived? Or is there an outbreak of "Delhi belly" in the German camp?

The Women's team beat Japan 3.5-0.5. Their top board held Trisha to a draw with solid play so is probably under-rated.

Tomorrow the Irishwomen meet the formidable Armenian team.

Both our teams have Black on odd-numbered boards.

For the benefit of those (admittedly probably the minority) who may come to this forum to share information rather than read/write rants, I offer the following.

No I'm in Ireland but have access to chewss24, chess-results.com etc and there are team reports on the ICU website - previously only about round 1 but they added rounds 2 and 3 today.

Round four summary follows. Our women's team, pitted against the mighty Armenia, sadly failed to trouble the scorer but tomorrow they meet a much less redoubtable opponent - Tadjikistan, in match 28. Another former Soviet republic, it's true, but their top board is "only" a WFM rated 1832 so we shall have the rating edge on each board and may hope for success.

The Open team came within a whisker of drawing with Germany which would have been a fantastic result. As already noted, Conor took down another high-rated GM thanks to great opening prep in a very wild line, followed up by more excellent endgame technique, though somewhere in the middle his opponent could probably have saved a draw.

On board 3 Tarun shouldn't blame himself for too much for taking a perpetual check a piece down because he had been worse earlier for a while and the winning line was (according to elite commentators Leko and Svidler) probably findable only by a computer.

Tomorrow it's perhaps time for Alex to have a rest? Or else let him have the White pieces at last and rest Conor whose pursuit of a GM norm would not benefit by playing below board 1.

The opponents are Zimbabwe who faced top seeds India in round 1 but have won two out of three matches since. Their top board (IM Rodwell Makoto, rated 2346) was praised by the commentators for the terrific resistance he put up against GM Vidit before he lost in about six hours, but we heavily out-rate the African team on the other boards.

Otherwise the main news from round 4 is that the two top seeded nations, India (1st team) and USA only drew their matches, against France and Uzbekistan respectively. Great kudos to France who did this without Firouzja and MVL, and this result will please those who like their teams to be, if not native, then at least genuine immigrants rather than hired guns. Caruana was beaten and Aronian held to another draw. The real standard-bearer for the USA seems to be Wesley So the Filipino. Wouldn't we prefer all-American Sam Shankland to be the hero?

These results mean there are now just five teams on 8 MP: India 2, England, Armenia (despite losing Aronian), Spain and Israel.

The game of the day could be Shirov (who earned a world championship match with Kasparov but never got to play it) versus Gukesh (who has 4/4). This is the kid who, a few years ago and in a losing position, saw Nigel Short hadn't pressed his clock and "won" their game in controversial circumstances.

So it's India1 v Romania, Spain v India2, England v Armenia and Israel v USA in the top four matches. Ireland are in match 34 so it's back to the second hall for them for, we hope, only one day.

The India first team will always play at the first table, because of television arrangements presumably.

From now on there should be some interesting match-ups every day and also some surprises. Zambia won today (against Egypt) and are on 6MP; they will meet Norway tomorrow, though I guess Magnus may not play.

Thanks for that.

Away from home and not able to watch any of the games today apart from a few snapshots occasionally on my phone. Maybe somebody else can take over doing these reports please?

Today was round 5 and two Irish wins as expected. Both are on 6 match points out of a possible 10 and the yo-yo seems to have come to an end since tomorrow they will both play opponents seeded somewhat lower than their initial ranking.

India, Georgia and Romania are now the only women's teams to have won all their five matches.

It was a clean sweep for the women's team against Tajikistan, Laura being rested. They are on 12.5 game points. Eibhia, the reserve and least experienced member of the team, has 3/3 which is excellent but she has yet to play against a high-rated opponent and it will be interesting to see how she copes when that happens. The others have all met two opponents significantly higher rated.

The Open team won 3-1 against Zimbabwe. Ireland now have 14 game points and tomorrow will play South Korea in match 36. The Koreans have two IMs but we should out-rate them on each board. From now on there won't be any really easy matches as any team that has reached 6MP must have some strong and experienced (or fast-improving) players.

Today, Mark Heidenfeld got on the scoreboard early after his opponent's 18th move allowed him to win a pawn by a simple but neat tactic (one of the few things I saw happen), after which the result was not in doubt.

Conor, also playing Black, also took advantage of an oversight by his opponent around move 27 to win material and duly won so he has 4/4 and currently a rating performance of 3132.

It was the players having White who only drew. Alex's opponent seems to have played a solid game but it was Tom's encounter on board 3 that gave me a fright (and probably his team-mates too). Around moves 20-25 he seems to have had a clear advantage but the first time I saw the game he had just blundered horribly by 30 Bxd4 and the chess24 assessment bar was showing solid Black (i.e., Tom was objectively totally lost).

When I called up the game, Tom's opponent had hit him with 32...Rxg2!? which was shocking at first sight but far inferior to 32...Re8 or 32...Qg5. Instead Tom was able to reach a roughly equal ending which his opponent misplayed so maybe Tom could even have won it with best play.

In other happenings, I see that Magnus Carslen did in fact do Zambia the courtesy of playing against them and duly recorded one of the day's quickest wins (time-wise). The Zambians got a draw on board 3.

In the top matches, England went down to Armenia (Luke McShane lost), USA beat Israel (thanks to the Cuban, Dominguez), India-1 beat Romania, France drew with Poland, Cuba beat Azerbaijan (unexpected), and India-2 beat Spain (Gukesh had an answer to everything Shirov tried; Praag lost on board 3 but the relative veteran on their team, Adhiban, got the second win).

So the only teams on five wins are India-2 and Armenia, who meet tomorrow, the last round before the rest day. Other top matches are: Uzbekistan-India-1, USA-Iran and Cuba-Spain.