The Chess Olympiad From A Different Perspective
From September 23 to October 5, one of the biggest events of the chess world took place in Batumi, Georgia. Many articles have been written about the Chess Olympiad from a general perspective on websites like Chess.com, Chessbase, and Chess24. However, I wanted to look at the olympiad from the perspective of a single team and to think about what their strategies might've been in different rounds. And so, I will start with the United States, the reigning champions going into the tournament.
Round 1
In the first round, the United States showed up 7 minutes late to the tournament. However, this was not necessarily their fault as team captain John Donaldson did his best to make sure that they would be early to the round, but there was a security holdup at the entrance that lasted more than 50 minutes. However, this didn't affect the United States and they still cruised to a 4-0 victory. Let's take a look at their quickest and nicest win.
Nakamura's win was a combination of tactics and just crushing his opponent positionally. So, Shankland, and Robson all won pretty easy games as well, so the United States were off to a good start.
Round 2
Round 2 was a lot tougher surprisingly. The United States played Georgia's 3 team as the host country can pick three separate teams to play the tournament. As it turned out, the Georgia 2 and Georgia 3 teams were both underrated in the open and women's sections. They were able to fight teams like the United States and Russia and the Georgia 2 team in the women's section finished 9th, a very impressive feat.
Courtesy FIDE Batumi Chess 2018
Going back to the match, Fabiano Caruana and Sam Shankland were the first to draw their games, surprising most fans that expected the United States to cruise to victory. Shankland drew first in a pretty lackluster game. Caruana played on longer, trying for winning chances, but found nothing. Caruana later said in an interview with Chess.com's Mike Klein "So far the [opening preparation] is going pretty well. Only the first game was sort of a fiasco". That only left Wesley So and Ray Robson to try to win the match for the United States. So had a promising position and eventually converted to win in a smooth, positional game.
That meant Ray Robson had to hold a tricky queen and pawn endgame. Robson was on the better side, but wasn't able to convert and got close to a losing final position.
Round 3
In Round 3, the United States faced a very tough opponent in the Netherlands, which was a surprise because they underperformed in the previous round. The match was likely going to be very close and it was heading for a tie until Jorden Van Foreest blundered a drawn endgame against Shankland. Shortly afterward, So got his third straight win, this time taking down Erwin L'Ami, second of Caruana's Round 3 opponent, Anish Giri.
Speaking of seconds, Caruana himself was playing without a second as Rustam Kasimdzhanov played on Board 1 for Uzbekistan.
Courtesy FIDE Batumi Chess 2018
Aleksandr Lenderman took the job of team coach for the United States open team, but they were all pretty independent in their analysis and studies, according to Caruana when speaking to Mike Klein for Chess.com. The United States overall played a pretty solid match, never in deep trouble and drawing their two Black games and winning their two White games.
Round 4
Caruana finally got a win against former World Champion Viswanathan Anand of India. The other three boards were pretty solid draws. Here is Caruana's nice win against Anand.
Because of the results, the United States got some rest for their next match against Israel. In the meantime, one of the United States's major competitors, Russia went down against Poland making headlines for the day.
Round 5
The United States faced another tough opponent in Israel in Round 5. Caruana won quickly against Boris Gelfand to grab the early lead for the reigning champions.
Wesley So held a draw against Maxim Rodshtein that was pretty much never in doubt. That left Hikaru Nakamura and Emil Sutovsky both pressing better middle game positions to decide the final result of the match. Nakamura had played a very sharp opening, possibly hoping to take advantage of the white pieces and win the match for his team. However, his position fizzled out to draw, leaving Sam Shankland to defend a seemingly easy endgame where Sutovsky couldn't make progress. Unfortunately for the United States, that was not what happened, costing them their first match point. They were not the only top team to go down, though. China lost to the Czech Republic, a huge shocker to many fans.
Round 6
The favorites started to bounce back from their previous draw against Israel. The United States faced Bosnia & Herzegovina, a surprisingly easy pairing. First, Wesley So crushed his much lower rated opponent. He was eventually followed by Caruana and Robson. Nakamura drew Dejan Marjanovic to end the encounter. The most interesting game of the four was Caruana's outclassing of Denis Kadric in a Sicilian.
Round 7
The Americans faced another fairly easy opponent in Croatia to take the lead alongside Azerbaijan and Poland, who they would play in the next two rounds. Ivan Saric, known for his win against none other than World Champion Magnus Carlsen in the Tromso 2014 Olympiad, played well against another 2800+ opponent, holding Fabiano Caruana to a draw. Wesley So cruised to another victory, reaching a score of 6/7. Here is his win.
Sam Shankland also defeated Ante Brkic as Nakamura made his fifth straight draw to give the United States a 3-1 victory. A side story of the round was Ray Robson being in the playing hall for a different reason than playing: drug testing. He had to go through two samples lasting almost 3 hours.
Round 8
Now, the United States had the climbed the ladder back up to the top and needed to try their luck with another top team. Often, the four final rounds are the most crucial in the final standings because several top battles take place. That was certainly the case in Batumi as the final few rounds were very dramatic. Nakamura made a draw against Arkadij Naiditsch to start the battle as So finally met his match, going down against Teimour Radjabov. The reigning champions seemed in danger of their first loss. But, Fabiano Caruana brought the hurt to Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.
As Caruana said in an interview after the match, "At some point, I felt like going out of our hands and suddenly, we have good chances to win it". And that was what happened. Sam Shankland slowly ground down a win against Rauf Mamedov to push the USA into sole first as Poland tied with Armenia, another successful result for the team John Donaldson picked as a dark horse to win it all.
Round 9
This was certainly a big match for the Americans and they faced Poland, a team that had continuously been having great results, maintaining an unbeaten score going into the match. The leaders seemed to be off to a good start as Caruana, So, and Shankland got favorable positions early on. Nakamura, however, seemed to be on the worse side of a Scandinavian. Kacper Piorun stated that he was very surprised about Nakamura's decision after the round. Nakamura's position continued to get worse and worse while So and Shankland's positions fizzled out to a draw. A great result from an ecstatic Piorun put Poland in the lead with one round to go.
Fabiano Caruana missed a forced mate and gave up a draw against Speed Chess Championship star Jan-Krzysztof Duda. A tough blow for the United States meant that they would have to catch up with the other teams with only two rounds to go.
Round 10
An exciting round saw the Hikaru Nakamura sit out for one of the first times in his career because of his disappointing loss the previous day. Caruana agreed to a fairly quick draw against Levon Aronian on the top board as So and Robson agreed to draws easily. Shankland beat Hrant Melkumyan with much better opening preparation to bring the United States back into a tie for first.
Also, Poland had their first loss against China. That meant that the two superstars would face off in the final round. In the case of a tie, Sonneborn-Berger tiebreaks (which decided the 2016 Chess Olympiad but is notoriously known to be disappointing to many fans). An obvious alternative to the the tiebreaks would be a rapid or blitz playoff.
Round 11
The China-USA matchup was actually pretty dry as Caruana wisely decided not to play on against Ding Liren, who was been unbeaten for more than a year now. Both players finished aside each other on the podium for Board 1 with Ding getting gold and Caruana taking silver. So and Shankland secured draws as Nakamura tried to push a slightly better position to no avail as Bu Xiangzhi held and secured a bronze medal on Board 4.
And so, the tournament was left to time as Poland, France, and Russia tried to catch up and the tournament directors worked on calculating tiebreaks. Basically, the tiebreaks (if I even understand them at all) are that you add up the scores of all the opponents of the teams with weight based on how much you beat them by. As time went on, Ian Nepomniatchchi defeated Etienne Bacrot to launch Russia into a tie with China and the United States. However, due to their earlier results, like a loss against Poland and a tie against Serbia, their tiebreaks ended up being the worst. China came just ahead of the reigning champions to take gold in a very hotly contested olympiad. An interesting side story was that Poland had by far the best tiebreaks, but just missed out with a last round tie against India. If they had won, they would've gotten the gold medal, their first big success since the 1930s when they had Tartakower and Rubinstein, among others, on their team.
In Other News
In the meantime, here are some other big events have been taking place. During the Olympiad, two big announcements were made about Chess.com sponsored events.
Tata Steel Chess India will be a tournament in the form of the Grand Chess Tour rapid and blitz tournaments. It will give India's best players, like Viswanathan Anand, Pentala Harikrishna, and Vidit Santosh Gujrathi, the chance to play some of the world's best players, like Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Levon Aronian, and Wesley So. The tournament will take place from November 9-14, overlapping with the World Chess Championship.
Will the qualifier be as strong as last year? Watch and find out at twitch.tv/chess or chess.com/tv on November 3. Here is a breakdown of some of the teams I expect to see playing.
Montreal Chessbrahs
The Chessbrahs seem like an obvious pick, because of their large fanbase and strong players, such as Hou Yifan, #1 women player, and Ivan Saric, who notably took down Magnus Carlsen in the 2014 Tromso Olympiad.
Reykjavik Puffins
The Puffins are underdogs, but the fans love them.
The war cry of "The puffins, the puffins, the puffins!" is a moment everyone will remember from Round 1 of Season 1 in their match against the Hamburg Swashbucklers.
Riga Magicians
Will the Magicians be able to perform some magic at this qualifier? The answer is probably yes. Riga just fell behind the Gorky Stormbringers to get relegated last season. but probably will come back swinging since they are such a strong team. However, it would be interesting to see how they fare against some of the newer teams trying to qualify.
London Towers
The Towers will try to bounce back from a really disappointing season where they didn't even field their 2700+ player, David Howell, a single time. However, Gawain Jones just might be able to pull the team into one of the coveted qualifying spots.
Atlanta Kings
Gadir Guseinov--Courtesy Wikipedia
The Kings already announced their lineup featuring Gadir Guseinov taking Board 1 with Daniel Gurevich, a star for Minnesota Blizzard last season, as a potential secret weapon on Board 3. Of course, I must mention streamer Ben Finegold, who will playing for his local team on Board 2. Their Board 4, Ben Moon, is less well known, so his performance will be important, especially because the performance of a Board 4 can separate the elite teams from the not quite as strong teams. This dazzling lineup will likely be pretty high up on the list with an average of 2478 FIDE.
Zagreb Chessentials
This young team from Croatia also already published their lineup of GM Sasa Martinovic, GM Zoran Jovanovic, IM Leon Livaic (who holds a 2600+ Chess.com Blitz rating and is very active on the site), IM Sven Tica, FM Jurica Srbis, and FM Lukas Winterberg. Since only four players can play in the qualifier, their best possible lineup would be Martinovic, Jovanovic, Livaic, and Srbis, which would be an average rating of 2496 FIDE.
New York Knights
Of course, I will be rooting for my local team, the New York Knights, as they attempt to qualify again. In the past, they have fielded Mark Paragua and Oliver Barbosa among others. The Knights lost a fan poll to Minnesota Blizzard, who had fan favorites and streamers Andrew Tang and John Bartholomew. They didn't even get close, as second place was our next team, also being quite strong.
San Francisco Mechanics
Sam Shankland--Courtesy Wikipedia
The Mechanics fielded Daniel Naroditsky, online blitz and bullet master and reigning Arena Kings Streamers Champion for last year's qualifier. But, another talented name was on the list of players expected to play for their team: Sam Shankland. Now, he is stronger than ever as United States Chess Champion and having gone well over 2700 in his many tournament victories. It would be exciting to see Shankland and Naroditsky in action representing the top players this time as Vidit, Nakamura, and Yu Yangyi, MVPs of the previous qualifier, won't have anything to prove.
Arkady Dvorkovich--Courtesy Chess.com
Another big piece of news was that Arkady Dvorkovich was elected FIDE President, ending Kirsan Ilyumzhinov's long and corrupt term, just to have another favorite of the Kremlin take up the mantle. Dvorkovich promised to build a professional, efficient and transparent institution. The election started off with a bang as Former World Championship Challenger Nigel Short withdrew from the election in favor of Dvorkovich. Georgios Makropoulos, deputy under Ilyumzhinov, gave a speech that wasn't very inspiring. Still, the vote was close at 103-78.
Stockfish--Courtesy Chess.com
Chess.com's Computer Championship Rapid Rumble came to a close as Stockfish convincingly took down Houdini 120-80 in the 200 game finals. Self taught engine Lc0 or Leela defeated Larry Kaufman's dragon, Komodo, who Chess.com acquired and often uses for Man vs. Machine matches 16-14 for the 3rd place match. Some very wacky bonus odds games, like sideways chess, finished off the season. Not long after that, the new season started: Blitz Battle. Many computers are playing blitz available at chess.com/ccc. Some of the additions include Equinox, Bobcat, Alfil, Black Mamba, Critter, and Komodo's new cousin, Komodo Monte Carlo.
Boris Savchenko--Courtesy chess-db.com
Boris Savchenko (tigra) dominated the field in Chess.com's October Titled Tuesday with some tricky positions where he seemed to be in trouble. Alexander Moskalenko, who finished second was the only player to beat Savchenko. 3rd place went to Vassily Korchmar, rounding out an all Russian podium. Here are some of Savchenko's craziest wins against Jose Eduardo Martinez Alcantara (Jospem) and Lena Sunilduth Narayanan (Indianlad).
Hikaru Nakamura--Courtesy Wikipedia
Finally, to finish off, Chess.com's Speed Chess Championship continued on as Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura defeated their opponents Vidit Santosh Gujrathi and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, to make the final four. The semifinals and finals will be packed into the weekend of November 31-December 2. So played his match on his birthday, making his win against Vidit a nice birthday present. The 5+2 and 3+2 portions were pretty close, but So started to run away with the match in bullet. Nakamura, however, said that So didn't play all that well and Vidit just didn't capitalize on all of his opportunities. So will certainly still have something to prove against young star Jan-Krzysztof Duda, who upset both Sergey Karjakin and Alexander Grischuk, two of the tournament's favorites. Nakamura also has a tough opponent in Levon Aronian, who is over 3000 blitz on the site, making Nakamura not the only one. His match followed a similar storyline as most of the 5+2 and 3+2 were pretty close, but at some point in the 3+2 he started a lead and just ran away with it in the bullet.
