Thursday, August 7, 2014

Round 5: Top matches

The fifth round of the Tromso Olympiad had some interesting matches. Azerbaijan could only draw with Serbia while Russia had the same result with Bulgaria. The first board pitted two old rivals, Kramnik and Topalov. Both have not been on speaking not hand-shaking terms since their acrimonious World Championship match where the Topalov team basically accused Kramnik of cheating. It was sweet revenge for Kramnik as he sacrificed an exchange to get a dominant position.






Armenia narrowly defeated Norway with the two top rated players in the world, Aronian and Carlsen playing to a draw. Sargissian beat Agdestein to allow Armenia to win 2.5-1.5.

The upset of the round was the loss of the highly rated Ukraine team to Uzbekistan. GM Vassily Ivancuk is having a horrible tournament so far and he suffered another loss to GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov. The hero for Uzbekistan was  IM Jahongir Vakhidov who upset GM Anton Korobov to give Uzbekistan a 2.5-1.5 win.

As expected Malaysia won 4-0 over Saudi Arabia. Fong Yit San had it easy as his point came without a single move being made. The sixth round will be another easy one as they are playing against Namibia and they can expect to pick up another match win.

Today is a rest day and the sixth round will resume tomorrow.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats to the team! they made some easy rating points. YitSan is probably not too happy about being robbed of the chance to gain some rating points too!

Anonymous said...

Heii, Malaysia won 4-0 and all old man Jimmy has to say was in one sentence. When Malaysia lost, he had so many snide comments. Jimmy sounds like a bitter old man. Come on, Jimmy boy, give the Malaysian boys more encouragement instead of only negatively couched comments. Publishing a loss by Yit San but not the fantastic win by Aron. Yechh! Looks like Jimmy is happy when the team to lose.

Jimmy Liew said...

The win was already expected so nothing much to say. It seems you are the one that is bitter. But whatever floats your boat.

Anonymous said...

Yea agreed. Russia is already expected to win... So Russia winning no need to write. No need see this olympiad anymore since we know everything that is going to happen. Nothing to say just copy paste from Chess-Results. Copy paste evaluation from Rybka. The quality of the games not important so long as results expected. The good moves are overlooked. Just keep posting stats. Malaysia against stronger opponent expected to lose. Against weaker opponent expected to win. Easy easy easy. Simple simple simple. Ivanchuk lose just write shocking lose by Ivanchuk without analysing the game. Carlsen draw just post title shocking draw by world champion. Quote Anand "keyboard generals with hindsight is always correct".

Anonymous said...

On a more positive note, I was pleasantly surprised to see our girls beat Bosnia & Herzegovania 2.5-1.5 despite having an average rating more than 200 points lower!

Jimmy Liew said...

Since anonymous is so passionate about our teams and follow their progress closely, I have a proposal for you. Why dont you write the reports and I'll publish them here.

zackbany said...

nice riposte by Mr Jimmy

zackbany said...

I hope Mr Jimmy will continue publish his opinion and analysis on the Tromso Olympiad, if anyone don't want to read or give their hate-comment, so be it, I for one will continue read this blog

Jimmy Liew said...

I'm serious about the proposal.

Anonymous said...

Checkmate lol...

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