Breaking the duck

Congratulations to CM Helmut Marko who has scored Papua New Guinea's first point of the 2012 Olympiad. He played a very good game on board 2 against South Korea, eventually threatening death along the long dark diagonal. His opponent was not able to deal with the threat and resigned shortly after. Unfortunately the other 3 players went down, but at least PNG is on the score board.


Marko,Helmut - Jang,Kyungsik [A38]
2012 Olympiad Istanbul, 30.08.2012

Oh, the Dutch!

With the move to match points, dropping the odd game at the Chess Olympiad does not hurt as much as it used to. To really blow your chances, the whole team has to misfire against weaker opponents. An obvious example of this is the team from The Netherlands who have had a very shaky start to the tournament.
In the first round the 9th seeds squeaked out a 2.5-1.5 win over Malaysia, which in itself was a surprise. The in the second round they lost 2.5-1.5 to Venezuela, who were seeded 58th. They are now on 2 match points, and 4 game points. Of course they aren't helped by the fact that their top board Anish Giri has been delayed by passport problems, and is yet to make an appearance.
At the other end of the field Fiji caused a bit of a shock, beating Kenya 3-1. While not one of the top African teams, Kenya are still a challenge, an so the win for Fiji was quite an achievement. PNG and Palau suffered 4-0 losses again, although this means they are finding their level as quickly as possible.
Australia drew 2-2 with Norway in a competitive match. David Smerdon played and Evans Gambit on board 1, sacrificed another pawn, and then hacked his opponent. Solomon and Ly drew, while Max Illingworth went down in the final game of the match. The Australian womens team had a tough pairing against India, with Biljana Dekic scoring the only half point.

2012 Olympiad Pictures

I'm starting to fill my on galleries with pictures from the 2012 Olympiad. The direct link is here or you can just click on the "My Chess Photos" link at the left of this blog, which will also bring up albums from previous olympiads (going back to 2006).

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.

2012 Chess Olympiad - Hour 1

I always enjoy the real start of the Olympiad. This is the hour before and after the scheduled starting time. The highlights are seeing chess friends for the first time in 2 or 4 years, meeting new people, and generally getting caught up in the excitement of the occasion. Of course 'getting caught up' also applies to the crowds trying to get into the venue/playing hall, and today was no different. With about 15 minutes to go, it was clear the round was not going to start on time. With 1 entrance, an x-ray machine and metal detector, it was always going to be slow going. Nonetheless the organisers did well to get the games started within half an hour of the scheduled start.
I took the opportunity provided by the delay to take a few photos, which I will put up on the web shortly. Once the games started I looked at a couple of interesting pairings, including Aus v Namibia, the top board games, and of course PNG versus the all GM Bangladesh team.

Its been a hard night's night

Currently sitting in the Technical Administration Panel's office, waiting for the final confirmation about team arrivals. As expected there have been a number of teams who have either been delayed, or have been held up at the airport (yes Bermuda, I'm looking in your direction). The organisers have dispatched search parties to the various hotels to find missing teams and captains, but this means that pairings are slightly delayed.

One thing an iPad can't do

Today is the day when all the teams arrive at the Olympiad. Of course there were some early arrivals, which in my case required a trip to the airport at 1 o'clock in the morning (to meet one of the PNG team). Surprisingly even at that time getting through customs was a slow process, and it wasn't until 2am that we made it back to the hotel. As I had volunteered for this bit of hand-holding, I was also required to deliver said team member (R. Jones), to his correct hotel this morning. Turns out the traditional method of using a taxi may not always work in Istanbul. The instructions were simple: First to the tournament hall (which was visible from the pick up point), and then on to the Adela Hotel. First sign of trouble was when the driver missed the turn off to the tournament (15 seconds into the trip). Then he stopped in the middle of a freeway to get me to right down the name of the hotel. He then got out of the car and began to ask other stopped drivers where the hotel was. They were no help, but I had my iPad on me and quickly brought up a map of Istanbul. "Here" I said. He looked at the iPad and immediately drove off in the wrong direction. As it was a freeway, opportunities to turn around were somewhat limited. Eventually we convinced him of his mistake and he went in the correct direction. However he still had no idea about the location of the hotel, so we convinced to take us back to the start point by saying "Wow, wow, wow"  over and over again. A somewhat surprised concierge greeted us, and when we explained the situation, flagged us a new taxi, sending the old driver away, both bemused and empty handed.
(* Embarrassing postscript - Tried the same journey this afternoon with a driver provided by the organisers. He went the same way as the taxi, but I decided against pointing this out. Turns out the taxi driver possibly knew where he was going, and Google Maps on the iPad had lied to me. The driver duly delivered me to the *only* Adela Hotel in Turkey)