Free the Bermuda 4

Apart from the crush at the entrance to the playing hall, the Olympiad got off to a pretty good start, at least inside the venue. The live broadcast system did have some difficulty, with a few misnamed players here and there. In one case GM Gawain Jones played 3 games, drawing for England, but losing for PNG and Wales!
All matches went according to seeding, with the higher ranked teams winning. However a number of lower rated teams did take points of their opponents, with Jamaica scoring 1.5 against Slovenia, and Malaysia scoring the same against Netherlands being the standout results.
Papua New Guinea went down 4-0 to the all GM Bangladesh team, although all the games went into the 3rd hour. Australia discovered that Namibia was a 'bony chicken' with a potential loss on the cards until Moulthun Ly and Stephen Solomon pulled off wins from dubious positions.
There were also a couple of no shows, which also happens on day 1. One team simply turned up late to the venue, but a couple of teams failed to arrive in Istanbul. The hardest case was Bermuda, who had 3 of their team less than 2 kilometres from the venue, but this was because they were still trapped in Immigration at the airport. So they played with just 2 players in round 1. The good news is that they were released late yesterday evening, and so will have a full team available for the 2nd round.