Thursday 6 September 2012

The Olympiad -Round 9.

Observing from a point of view of Sweden and Bosnia and Herzegovina, today´s round was probably the best one in the whole Olympiad (combined).
Bosnians played against Finland which is rated just 2 places bellow Bosnian team, but I am not sure who had higher rating in this match, because we played with reserve player.
And our reserve player is our best scorer so far, and it will stay to the end of Olympiad.
Sweden won against Mongolia, with convincing 3-1 victory.


Bosnia and Herzegovina-Finland 2,5-1,5

Yesterday, I wrote that Bosnian will do a big job if Kurajica stops Nybäck on board number one. It didn´t happened. Kurajica played one variation in Grunfeld Indian Defence, which I played against Fedoseev in Marienbad 2011. I am sure that you can found that game in every database. Fedoseev gave me advantage of bishop pair, just to compromise my structure on the queen-side, and than he went to win a pawn and a game.
Nybäck did the same against Kurajica (although, their game transposed in Bejtovic-Fedoseev a bit later after they jumped with their knights just to play back on f3 and f6) and he won a game quite easy. It is obvious that our older players can not play on their highest level during long competition like the Olympiad.
That´s why Bosnian younger players doing their job.
Tomic won quite convincing without problems, and this is his first victory for national team.
Denis Kadric can stop think about GM norm(s) because he won again, this time with black pieces, and his performance is a way above 2700.
That was 2-1 to Bosnians.
Stojanovic had some problems but he defended well, and secured an important victory.
Even if this victory sounds like routine, I shall remind readers again that the teams were rated almost equal (for some, not obvious reason everybody expected Bosnian victory).
A very good result for us.

Sweden-Mongolia

In this moments it seems that Sweden has a few players in real form.
Hans Tikkanen won his game in a nice style, and finished it with a pseudo-queen sacrifice.
Nils Grandelius had some problems on the first board, but he defended well and it was never so dangerous that I was worried that he might lose.
Emanuel Berg played a very complicated game, and at some points he was lost, but his opponent was in the time trouble, and he managed to escape with a draw.
Smith took his chance today, and won a game which was very complicated in the time trouble and could go in both directions.
He showed better nerves than in previous rounds and converted his advantage in completely winning endgame. He did not have any problems in converting it.
Sweden won with a big score 3-1 and now they can expect harder opponents tomorrow (and with a good result tomorrow, even harder in the last round).

Other results:

Russia-USA 1,5-2,5
What a match! Before this round it seemed that nothing can stop Russians on their way to gold medal, but USA won after the heavy fight.
Kamsky won against Grischuk on the second board after he showed some good technique.
A game between Nakamura and Kramnik will probably be one of the legendary games from the Olympiads. Nakamura won very unbalanced game, and I don´t have a clue what actually happened.
Jakovenko won against Robson, but Onishuk and Karjakin played a draw, and now we have complete drama in the last two rounds.

Philippines-China 0,5-3,5
China won against the biggest surprise in the Olympiad and they are now up on 15 mp together with USA, Armenia and Russia.

Armenia-Germany 2,5-1,5
Armenia won against European Champion to join the lead.

Poland-Azerbaijan 2-2
Neither Poland or Azerbaijan can be satisfied with this result because it means that they are 2 mp from medal.

Ukraine-France 3-1
Ukraine maybe still have some chances for good place.

Netherlands-Israel 3-1
Van Welly won nicely against Sutovsky and Smeets won against Avrukh.

Serbia-Argentina 1,5-2,5
Hungary-Italy 3-1
Georgia-India 2-2
If you look at the game between Sanikidze and Gupta, than you can see how chess can be cruel and hard game.

Vietnam-England 3-1
England is really low in the table right now, and this is the same Vietnam which lost against Bosnians.

Uzbekistan-Slovenia 2-2
Denmark-Macedonia 2,5-1,5
Egypt-Croatia 1-3

Update with standing and pairings for the next round will be published as soon as it will be available on the official website.

Update:

Rank after round 9:

1-4. China, Russia, USA, Armenia 15 mp
5-7. Netherlands, Argentina, Ukraine 14 mp
....
13. Denmark  13 mp
....
26. Croatia  12 mp
...
28. Slovenia 12 mp
....
31. Serbia 11 mp
....
34. Macedonia  11 mp
....
38. Sweden   11 mp
39. Bosnia and Herzegovina 11 mp
....
48. Montenegro 10 mp

Pairings round 10:

China-USA
This is now clearly a match for highest place.
Russia-Argentina
Russians will take a bit easier opponents now, after they played against all of the big teams.
Netherlands-Armenia
Azerbaijan-Ukraine
Three out of this 8 teams will take the medals, as I can not see that some team with 13 can do it now.

......
Sweden-Canada
Sweden is favourite in this match, and this is a nice chance to win a third match in a row, and play for a very good, possibly top 20 place in the last round.

Bosnia and Herzegovina-Austria
Austria has a better average rating, but not supranationally, and despite being a slight favourite  I believe in Bosnians.
International Master Denis Kadric 16 years old already secured his final norm (it counts as double norm) and he only needs to go up to 2500 in rating to became new B&H Grandmaster.

Denmark-Hungary
This can be interesting, as Danish players are really high in the table right now.

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