Olympics, Round 4: Big Upsets at the Top (UPDATED)
Top seed USA and defending champion Uzbekistan go down to defeat.
I didn’t expect the U.S. to go 11-0 in the Olympics, but I didn’t expect them to lose in round 4 to Ukraine, either. And while the Vietnamese team is very good, their 3-1 win over the 4th seed and defending champions from Uzbekistan is at least as surprising. There’s still plenty of time for both teams to catch up, but this will hurt their chances of winning; not only because of the lost points, but because having weaker opponents while they’re catching up will also hurt their tiebreak scores.
For the U.S., the loss was unnecessary, if understandable. On board 1 Fabiano Caruana won a complicated game against Andrei Volokitin, and Ukraine struck back on board 4 as Anton Korobov ground out victory in an endgame against Ray Robson. On board 3 Leinier Dominguez was pressing against Ruslan Ponomariov, but allowed a repetition that brought the game to a speedy end. The last game to finish, and the one that decided the match, was between Vasyl Ivanchuk and Wesley So. Ivanchuk played enterprisingly with White, but So outplayed him and reached what seemed like a clear two-results position: either So would win or the game would end in a draw. Perhaps So felt too much pressure to play for a win and, somehow, managed to stumble into one of the very few ways it was even possible to lose (aside from over blunders giving up material or walking into an immediate mate). It was a complete nightmare. Hopefully the team rallies around him, and he plays heroically for the rest of the competition.
As for the Uzbeks, I suspect that Nodirbek Yakubboev’s loss on board two to Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son was somewhat similar: pushing too hard to make something happen for the sake of the team. In his case, however, it was necessary, as only a win would salvage a 2-2 tie. (Something David Howell managed to do, heroically, in England’s match with Georgia.)
The other favorites came through: India butchered Serbia 3.5-0.5, China overcame Armenia thanks to Yu Yangyi’s win over Gabriel Sargissian (Ding Liren continues to draw his games; nary a win so far) to win 2.5-1.5, Hungary beat Italy 2.5-1.5, Poland beat Lithuania 2.5-1.5 thanks to Jan-Krzyzstof Duda’s win on board 1, Azerbaijan beat Montenegro 3-1, and Spain drubbed Sweden 3.5-0.5. (Magnus Carlsen’s Norway also rolled over Slovakia, 3-1, with Carlsen winning a very impressive game.)
Games will have to wait until later today (I hope), or at worst until the rest day.
UPDATE: Here’s a selection of games, with my annotations.
Meanwhile, here are the leading pairings for round 5 (team scores in parentheses; remember, it’s based on 2-1-0 scoring):
India (8) vs. Azerbaijan (8)
Ukraine (8) vs. Hungary (8)
Spain (8) vs. China (8)
Vietnam (8) vs. Poland (8)
Turkey (7) vs. Norway (7)
Iran (7) vs. Canada (7)
There are many teams with 6 points, including the U.S.A. (playing Argentina) and Uzbekistan (facing Moldova).
A word or two about the concurrent Women’s competition: there are seven teams with perfect 8-0 scores: China, India, U.S.A., Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia. You might be surprised to know that China is only the fourth seed (India is #1; the U.S. is #7), despite holding the Women’s World Championship for most of the last 30 years or so. Have they fallen, and/or the rest of the world caught up? Well, the rest of the world has done some catching up, but it’s mainly that their best players aren’t participating. Hou Yifan has hardly played for years, so that’s no surprise, but the Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun isn’t playing, her challenger Tan Zhongyi isn’t playing, 2024 Candidate and 2023 Women’s World Championship challenger Lei Tingjie isn’t playing…what gives? Of course I want the U.S. to win the Women’s Olympiad and their chances are greatly improved by China not fielding their strongest team. But where is the glory in beating China’s B or, really, their C team? Federations should not be cheapskates when it comes to fielding and funding their best players, while players who don’t play without an extremely good reason should be punished by their national chess federations or maybe even FIDE. What’s the essential point of the Olympiad if it’s not for countries to bring out their best and for individuals to represent their countries to the best of their ability? [Rant over. Do you disagree?] So, at a minimum, kudos to Magnus Carlsen for playing. No doubt he’s getting a pile of money to play; even so, he could have said no, especially since he has expressed his antipathy towards classical time controls on many occasions (and probably has enough money to fund a substantial fraction of the event’s participants).