The Armenian Team has won the 2011 World Teams Championship, proving once again that they are masters of teams chess. Although ranked 4th by seeding, they finished with 14/18 (match points scoring), winning 5 matches and drawing 4. This put them 1 point ahead of the host country China, who won 6 matches, but lost 2. Ukraine finished 3rd, with top seeds Russia once again coming up short in a teams event by finishing in a 3 way tie for 4th.
Unlike the Olympiad, this event is an all play all, so there is nowhere to rest after a bad result. Armenia used a similar strategy to their 2 Olympiad winning teams by playing their top 4 for almost all their games (Aronian rested once to give their board 5 his only game). Most other teams rotated players, although the majority of board 1 players played all 9 games.
Apart from Russia, Israel's 9th place was also a surprise, as they normally do well at Olympiads. Less of a surprise was Egypt finishing 10th, as they were rated 100 points below the next team.
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
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1 e4,e5 2 Nf3,Bc5 3 Nxe5, Nc6 4 Nf3, d5 5 exd5, Qxd5 6 Nc3, Qh5 (+0.96) - Shredder
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