Thursday 23 September 2010

2010 Olympiad - Day 2

Second round saw PNG paired with Ireland. Pretty tough in round 2, although I suspect the Irish felt the need for some compensation after being paired with Russia 1 yesterday. And while the match wasn't as one-sided as yesterday (for us that is, the Irish took a half point off the Russians), we still got done 4-0. My game was pretty horrible (and so will not be show at this time), but Helmut Marko and Rupert Jones did put up a good fight on the bottom 2 boards.
On the table next to us was the Norway-Portugal match, with Magnus Carlsen making his first appearance. Being the fan-boy that I am, I've put a couple of pictures in my photo gallery (link to the left). Another interesting pairing was Australia v Armenia, with Armenian Board 1 Lev Aronian a frequent visitor to Australia (and more specifically, the tennis courts across the road from my office). However Lev wasn't in a generous mood, and he hacked Zong Yuan Zhao on board 1. Better news on Board 2 where Smerdon drew with Akopian, although if you look at the game it is more correct to say that Akopian drew with Smerdon.

Smerdon - Akopian [C02]
Olympiad 2010, 22.09.2010

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.Bd3 cxd4 7.cxd4 Bd7 8.0-0 Nxd4 9.Nbd2 Bc5 10.Nxd4 Bxd4 11.Nf3 Ne7 12.Nxd4 Qxd4 13.Re1 Nc6 14.Be3 Qxe5 15.Qd2 d4 16.Bh6 Qh5 17.Bxg7 Rg8 18.Bf6 Rxg2+ 19.Kxg2 Qg4+ 20.Kf1 Qh3+ 21.Ke2 Qg4+ 22.Kf1 ½-½

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And I was watching your game online!
(I guess it shows that the organisation is not too bad). What was the idea behind e5/Bxd4?
Now, you know that there are people here watching, I hope you will do better!

ChessExpress Fan said...

best of luck for the team remaining games !!!

a request if possible could you get some photos of the New Zealand team (mens and/or womens) ?

failing this a few shots of the many beautiful chess playing ladies to replace the photos of the Wife would be much appericated

Anonymous said...

i saw this game... Black is two pawns up, don't forget. So if white cannot prove anything he is lost. I got the impression most of the this game (for Smerdon) would have been already worked out in preparation. Pete