Ireland at the 41st World Chess Olympiad Tromsø 2014

If the clocks are right Colm only has about 2.30 minutes left while his opponent has 1 hour and 14 and its a difficult position so we are staring at a possible whitewash here!

The computer says its over and Colm lost, probably ran out of time. I think he was aiming to sacrifice his rook for that free pawn and see can he get stalemate/draw with his king against the other pawn (and presuming his opponent doesn't know how to checkmate with a knight and bishop alone).

Hi. Alex Lopez here. The live boards are completely wrong, and seem to be showing games from some other teams. We are currently down 1-0 (I lost) with the remaining three games to go. Board 1 is under a little bit of pressure, but the other two have good positions. Hopefully we will be able to win the match.

Well I might as well set the ball rolling, Sam I take it is Wilton Calicoca and I wonder why didn't he put the bishop on f5 , going to h7, when he had the chance there?

I'm sorry the board updates erractically on this computer, I'm very sorry it didn't even show he was killing a pawn...it's crashing regularly on me! He is flying for sure...

cdeb wrote: »

So we have Uganda in round 4. An IM and a CM top two boards. Might be one to give Sam a rest in as his norm chances can't really take too many low-rated players? Hope for a win and higher-rated opposition in round 5.

The women have Chile, who had a bad result against Malaysia today, losing 3-1 where a 3-1 win was the expected score.

What was the result for both teams? Did Sam win and against whom? Thanks!

Well all the games are there now and we can see what happened. In my - distinctly unexpert! - opinion I think what has happened is that they got caught up in all this talk about going for open and unusual lines in order to take apart a weaker player who is otherwise trying to keep things tight and go for a draw. But its still the Olympiad and they should be still somewhat cautious?

So for example Baburin sacrificed a pawn each on moves 27 and 28 which destroyed his pawn defences and opened it up for the opposition. It was to launch an attack that yielded a rook/knight exchange but then his opponent swapped queens and so that attack petered out. I think Baburin was sure he would come out on top once it opened up but he was letting down such a phalanx of pawns that with a good player it was always going to spell trouble?

Alex Lopez played, I think anyways, way too open and gung-ho throughout and again I think underestimated his opponent.

Sam also seemed to go for a more open, and hence leaking looking, defence originally but after a while he reverted to his more usual game and we got a bit of solidity e.g. he carefully defended with pawns both his bishops before he launched his attack and then won very well from what was a bad enough position originally.

Colm bucked the trend and played an ordinary game and seemed to be winning by quite a bit in development at move 15 say. Then about 20 he got the prevailing fever and went gung-ho as well! (Correctly as it happens!) At move 25 he was -2.98 to the good then went a pawn up and could have gone another maybe? Anyway at about move 35 he looked very consolidated with his pawn up and maybe going onto win. (Just a query I wonder could he go f4 on move 53? edit: I see now, he was afraid to lose his pawn on e5 to a rook bishop combination). Anyway he definitely let his opponent get back at him with a passed pawn that Colm could have killed but possibly underestimated again? Then maybe in time trouble blundered a piece at which point it looked dire (move 60 ish). But then Colm worked out the pawn ending brilliantly to scrape the draw. Overall he was in control most of the time, playing well, and I guess was unlucky.

Again this is just my, extremely, humble opinion and anyhow there is all to play for yet!

Anyway we are doing well now (if this is really us!). Baburin is beginning to bully his opponent, Sam feels strong enough to concede a pawn to open things up. Colm looks comfortable and is dominating a bit while Mark sacrificed a knight for an early queen attack. It might work but the computer doesn't like it.