Olympics, Round 7

Armenia keeps the lead after a semi-lucky draw with the U.S.

On days like today, I wish I had a co-blogger, hoping he’d take the miserable task of writing about United States’ tragicomic match with Armenia from round 7 of the Olympiad. Alas, this is a one-man operation. “Eat the frog”, they say, so here goes.

Armenia entered the day half a point ahead of the U.S. and a point ahead of the next closest teams, having raced out to a 6-0 start (technically, a 12-0 start, given the 2-1-0 scoring) while the top-seeded Americans had the blemish of a drawn match with Uzbekistan in round 4. In their face-off today, the U.S. was a heavy favorite, at least on paper, even with Levon Aronian taking the round off - rightly, in my opinion. What followed was a farce, and nearly a catastrophe - for both teams!

Let’s start with board 1. On board 1 Fabiano Caruana was doing well against Gabriel Sargissian, equalizing in the early middlegame (with Black) and then finding himself with a clear advantage around move 29. The position became equal again, but then Caruana made a series of very poor decisions from moves 33 to 35. I don’t know if he was in time trouble or if Sargissian was (or both), but Caruana burned his bridges with neither justification nor need, and was simply lost by the time control. Sargissian converted his advantage smoothly in the second time control: point to Armenia.

On board 2 Wesley So won quickly with a nice attack, and if you don’t look too closely you might think it was a clean and brilliant game on his part. While it’s true that the closing part of the game, from 19.Rxe4 on, was terrific, his 17th and especially his 18th moves were awful. Had Hrant Melkumyan found 18…Bf8! and only then, after 19.Bxf8, 19…e4, the U.S. would have lost this game as well and almost certainly the match with it. Fortunately for So & friends, Melkumyan fell into a very nice trap and lost. Point to the U.S.

Board 3 was perhaps the biggest embarrassment to the Armenia team (though it would have been topped on board 4 had the tragic finish not occurred). With White in a line that he had played as recently as 2020 and that Leinier Dominguez had played several times with the black pieces, Samvel Ter-Sahakyan followed theory for 17 moves (and not the best line, either - he was already slightly worse), played a bad novelty, and was clearly worse. Fortunately for him, Dominguez bailed him out and equality was re-established; unfortunately for him, his play in the lead-up to the time control wasn’t very good, and Dominguez took control and won. It’s not that Ter-Sahakyan’s play in the game was especially poor; Dominguez is a great player who can defeat anyone. But Ter-Sahakyan’s opening preparation was nearly disastrous, and so it’s another point to the Americans: 2-1 in their favor.

Finally, board 4. Sam Shankland had been having a very difficult event, despite his good score, and this round was the fetid cherry on top. A normal opening and middlegame with Robert Hovhannisyan lead to a roughly equal position, but Shankland tried to make “something” happen. He succeeded, and by the time control he was a pawn down in a lost queen and bishop ending. However, while Shankland hasn’t done a good job of staying out of trouble in this Olympiad, he has done a brilliant job of fighting his way out of trouble once he’s in it. The game went on, and on, and on, and even though he was always utterly lost, around move 80 his defense started to pay off. Hovhannisyan made several errors, allowing Shankland to reach a drawn position. To fail to win this game and cost him team the match would have been a horror for Hovhannisyan, but an even bigger horror was yet to happen.

The players were using a 30-second increment (see rule 4.3.5), and at this point Shankland had a couple of minutes to make his 91st move. Unfortunately, he used no time at all. Have a look (I’d recommend starting at 5:48:00):

Of course, he assumed that Hovhannisyan was playing 90…Qh1+, and didn’t even notice until after he played 91.Kc2 on the board that the actual move was 90…Qg2. What makes this especially incredible is that 90…Qg2 is a natural move - it does threaten mate, after all - so one would expect it to be on Shankland’s radar. Regardless, one doesn’t do that. Even in online blitz, experienced players have learned to be extremely careful about premove; how can he do this in an over the board classical game? Well, he did it, and it cost him the game and the U.S. what would have been match victory.

Still, it’s easy to be what they call “philosophical” about the match draw. Hovhannisyan was winning - overwhelmingly - for almost 2/3 of the game - and So could have lost as well. Moreover, while the United States no longer has its fate in its own hands, it’s unlikely that the Armenian team will win its remaining four matches. (And if it does, it will be a very deserving winner.) On the other hand, I haven’t seen anything from the U.S. team so far, other than their big, beautiful ratings, to suggest that they’re going to win out, either, and they are tied with five other teams right now.

Speaking of which, that’s enough about the Armenia-U.S.A. match. Another big match on the day saw two of the Indian teams face off: India 1 vs. India 3. They drew on the top two boards, but the favored India 1 won on boards 3 and 4 to take the match. India 2 - my dark horse candidate to win the tournament - demolished the Cuban team 3.5-0.5. (Needless to say, Gukesh won again: 7-0!) Very impressive, but they were outdone by the other prodigy squad, as Uzbekistan blanked Peru 4-0. Germany beat Serbia 2.5-1.5, and in a major upset Kazakhstan beat Spain 2.5-1.5. All the winning teams mentioned in this paragraph are now tied with the U.S. for second, just behind Armenia.

Here is today’s selection of games; and now, the pairings for round 8:

Armenia (13) - India 1 (12)

USA (12) - India 2 (12) (There it is, one of the pairings we’ve all been waiting for!)

Germany (12) - Uzbekistan (12)

Kazakhstan (12) - Azerbaijan (11)

(Other teams with 11: Netherlands, Hungary, France, Iran, and Brazil.)