2018 Olympiad - Day 1

The first day of the 2018 Chess Olympiad is of course, an exercise in controlled chaos. It is a given that the round will start late, so I was impressed that it started at 3:15, only 15 minutes after the published start time. There was the usual scrum at the security checks and some teams were still outside when the clocks started (most notably the USA) but even they did not lose, as the default time is a slightly better 15 minutes (rather than 0).
The PNG team played reasonably well against an IM strength Belgium team, but one by one we went down. I was probably lost earlier than my team mates (having forgotten my prep as early as move 5), but managed to hang on until just before the first time control. Tom McCoy had a good Olympiad debut, taking it up to his opponent, but in the end the rating gap counted for something.
Today PNG play Lichtenstein, which isn't a bad pairing for us. Although we are outrated across the boards, it isn't by a hug amount, and hopefully we can get something from the match.