Bosnia and Herzegovina won with high score 3-1 against Qatar and moved on shared 5-21 place.
Sweden won against Andorra with 3,5-0,5 and soon it will be fight for higher positions again.
There were some very interesting results for teams from former Yugoslavia.
Croatian team won against France with 2,5-1,5 and moved on shared 3-4 place !
Montenegro played 2-2 against European Champion, Germany and they share place with Bosnian team.
Russia and Armenia won against Hungary respectively Ukraine and moved on top.
Bosnia and Herzegovina - Qatar 3-1
It was very hard to predict outcome of this match, because Qatar is just slightly lower rated than Bosnia and Herzegovina, but guys did not disappointed us today.
While Kurajica and Stojanovic had stable positions with black pieces, Kadric got some advantage with white, and Dizdarevic had very complicated position.
Just before time control, Kurajica won a pawn, and it seemed that Kadric had substantial advantage, when Dizdarevic´s opponent blundered a whole rook! It was 1-0 to us.
Dizdarevic had slight advantage in that position and it seemed that he was on his way to win a pawn.
Stojanovic had his chance to win a piece but he missed it, and his game finished in a draw.
It was 1,5-0,5.
Kurajica than took wise decision and took a draw in a position where all his pawns were on one side. He secured us at least a draw, but Kadric was on his way to win the game, and it was obvious that we will win the match.
After expected victory on fourth board, result was 3-1 for our team.
Tomorrow is a free day and a day after tomorrow we will play against China.
China is super-strong and our team should just enjoy in this match, without any pressure.
After 5 rounds we won 3 matches, and played 2 draws.
I have to say that we won against Vietnam who is much better rated, and played draws against Serbia and Slovakia and these teams are also better rated.
We won against lower rated opponent in the first round, and slightly lower rated Qatar.
I don´t know how it will finish for our team, but for now results are fantastic.
Sweden - Andorra 3,5-1,5
I just knew it that Swedish team will just destroy their opponents today. It can not be possible to play as badly as yesterday.
Nils Grandelius took advantage on the first board, but somewhere he did not played aggressive enough and his opponent got some chances for a draw. When Nils understood that with a draw his team would win the match he did not hesitated to take it (although his position was not better anymore)
In that moment Pontus Carlsson and Hans Tikkanen already won their games on board 4 respectively 2.
It seemed that Hans had some problems, because he lost a pawn after the opening (I doubt that was a sacrifice) but he constantly posed the new problems to his opponent to the moment when he collapsed.
Pontus played Najdorf variation in the Sicilian Defence, and White played quite solid.
I remember when Sergej Movsesian said to me once in Prague, "You can not play Najdorf variation and expect that all your opponents will go in Bg5 or The English Attack". He talked about one of the last round games in Prague Open when Black struggled to find a way to play for a win and it seemed to me that Pontus had same problems to get the position with mutual chances. His opponent helped him blundering a piece.
Emanuel Berg played for the king attack in the Sicilian with a double fianchetto.
Together with time trouble, Black got all sorts of troubles...down in material, the bad king and so on.
Quite nice victory for Sweden.
In the next round Sweden will play against Scotland, and it will be very interesting match.
Swedes are favourites and I think that they should win the match, but Scotch team would not be underestimated.
Other results:
Armenia-Ukraine 2,5-1,5 Three draws and Aronian´s victory against Ivanchuk
Russia-Hungary 2,5-1,5 Three draws and Grishuck´s victory against Almasi
Germany-Montenegro 2-2 The very nice result for Montenegro. Well done guys.
Croatia-France 2,5-1,5 One more good result for our neighbourhoods. Congratulations.
USA-Czech Republic 2-2
India-England 2-2
Azerbaijan-Canada 3,5-0,5
Rank after 5 round:
1-2. Armenia,Russia 10 MP
3-4. Azerbaijan,Croatia 9 MP
5-21. China, Ukraine, Germany, India, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro, England .........
I have to mention one interesting thing.
When Soviet Union felled apart we got many new countries in Chess Olympiads....and we could read about that many times on many places.
But, somehow it was not mentioned many times that when Yugoslavia felled apart that we got many strong teams in Olympiads as well.
If we just count number of GMs in some countries, we can see that Russia has 217 which is far more than anyone else in the World, followed by Ukraine,USA and Germany with around 70 GMs each.
If we count number of GMs in six republics of former Yugoslavia, than we can see that we have 118 GMs.
Just hypothetically, if all 6 countries plays like one, that will not be one of the best teams in the Olympiad, because there are no 2700+ GMs (Ivan Sokolov is around, but I did not counted him because he plays for Netherlands). What is the reason why GMs from former Yugoslavia can not reach highest level is unknown for me as in such a base with , I repeat, 118 GMs should be enough material for at least few players in top 50 in the World.
Tomorrow is a free day in the Olympiad, and interesting fights will continue on Monday.
Interesting matches:
Russia-Armenia
Croatia-Azerbaijan
Bosnia and Herzegovina-China
England-Italy
Montenegro-Ukraine
Germany-USA
Philippines-Bulgaria
Czech Republic-Spain
India-Israel
Sweden-Scotland
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