Olympiad Day 1

The big day has finally arrived, with almost a thousand players moving into the playing hall for the first round of the 2008 Olympiad. There was much interest in the start of the first round as FIDE has introduced a rule that players absent at the start of the round will lose. Although almost all teams managed to front up on time there was a bizarre result in the Moldova v Morocco match where Morocco failed to show but Moldova only scored 3 points after their board 1 went missing as well.
As for the chess, the Olympiad is using accelerated pairings which meant that instead of being massacred 4-0 by Indonesia, Papua New Guinea would probably score the same result against Uruguay. As it turned out the acceleration helped us a little bit as I managed to draw on board 2, limiting our defeat to 3.5-0.5 Despite the margin, we fought hard on all boards, with the top 3 boards heading into the 4th hour of the game before the result became clear.
As you can see in the photo, at least 3 of the team were taking the match seriously, although my distant stare can be explained by a desire not to cough all over my opponent and give him the sore throat I have been suffering from. (Many thanks to Cathy Rogers for providing the photo)
At the moment I am still hamstrung by the internet facilities at hotel, but hopefully these will be sorted out quickly, and I will be able to provide games and extended commentary.