Olympics, Round 5

India 2, Armenia lead; five teams, including the U.S., are half a point behind.

I keep warning you, dear readers, that India 2 is a force to be reckoned with at the Olympiad, and thanks especially to their 16-year-old board 1, Dommaraju Gukesh (over 2700; the third-youngest player in history to cross that barrier) and his 5-for-5 score (today’s victim: Spain’s Alexei Shirov), this team of young monsters is in first. India 2 and Armenia are the only perfect scores left, with the Indian team technically in first thanks to their better tiebreaks.

India 2 suffered their first loss on any board in that match with Spain, with Jaime Santos Latasa grinding out a long victory of Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, but by that time the Indian team had already scored 2.5 points to clinch match victory. Gukesh beat Shirov, as mentioned above, and Adhiban beat Iturrizaga. As for the Armenians, they maintained perfection by defeating England 2.5-1.5, drawing three games while Hrant Melkumyan beat Luke McShane on board 2.

The other team that entered the round with a perfect match score was Israel - and this despite playing without Boris Gelfand. They got to play the top seeded U.S. squad, and it was a tough match. Their badly outrated board 1, Avital Boruchovsky, managed to save a very bad position against Fabiano Caruana, whose bad form since the first half of the Candidates has continued. On board two, Levon Aronian got nothing on the white side of a Petroff against Tamir Nabaty - another draw - and Ilia Smirin vs. Wesley So on board three was a draw that could have been agreed before the game. It was on board 4 that the U.S. triumphed, with Leinier Dominguez - the star of the U.S. team thus far - defeating Maxim Rodshtein.

Other top results: India 1 beat Romania 2.5-1.5, France and Poland drew their match, Cuba notched a 2.5-1.5 upset over Azerbaijan, Turkey beat Iran 3-1, and the Uzbekistan prodigies followed up their drawn match against the U.S. with a 4-0 sweep of Slovakia.

Here is today’s selection of games, and here are the top pairings for round 6:

India 2 - Armenia

Uzbekistan - India

USA - Iran

Cuba - Spain