Olympics, Round 8

Armenia keeps the lead, and...I told you so.

As the Russian Olympic team learned, repeatedly, after Garry Kasparov’s retirement, being the top seed guarantees one exactly nothing. Unfortunately, this is the lesson the U.S. team is forced to learn in this year’s Olympiad. After two drawn matches and now today’s convincing loss to the India 2 team - whom I’ve been warning readers about since what? - round 3? - they are practically if not mathematically eliminated from the race for first and will probably have to go 3-0 the rest of the way to medal.

Let’s start with the leaders, however, as Armenia took on India 1. Armenia, even without their long-time leader Levon Aronian, continues its remarkable run. In round 6 they defeated India 2, in round 7 they drew with the top-seeded U.S. thanks to the horror/miracle of Sam Shankland’s “premove” error, and today they defeated the second-seeded India 1. Boards 2-4 were drawn, and on board 1 Gabriel Sargissian played forever against Pentala Harikrishna. The evaluation was always in Sargissian’s favor, see-sawing between a winning advantage and something closer to a draw. It’s almost impossible to hold such positions forever, though, and ultimately Harikrishna didn’t, making a decisive error on move 96 and resigning on move 102. A brutal way to lose, if not quite as tragic and painful as the end of the Robert Hovhannisyan - Shankland game. Regardless, the upshot is that Armenia won the match and continues in clear first with 15 match points. (That’s 7.5/8, but on 2-1-0 scoring.)

Now to the U.S., or rather, to India 2. Dommaraju Gukesh has been a beast on board 1, going 7-0 prior to this game, but the team is not just Gukesh. That said, Gukesh won again, ho hum, despite having the black pieces against Fabiano Caruana. Caruana’s play in the opening and early middlegame was superior to his opponent’s, but the rest of the way Gukesh was both the stronger and the more objective player. Caruana had a draw in the bag for much of the game, but kept pushing - without justification - and was lost well before the time control. This issue of overpressing has cost Caruana in all three of his losses - perhaps it’s fatigue, and he isn’t able to feel it from the inside.

Whatever the explanation, it was a tough day at the office for Caruana, but not just for him. While Levon Aronian and Wesley So managed to draw their games, all four U.S. players were lost at some point in their games. In fact, Aronian was still considerably worse when Nihal Sarin offered him a draw, but I guess Sarin felt so comfortable about the match situation that he was willing to let Aronian slide where someone else (Magnus Carlsen being the obvious example, but probably many other players, too) would have made him suffer until the draw was manifestly obvious. Meanwhile, So was probably surprised by Praggnanandhaa choice of an Accelerated Dragon turned “regular” Dragon, and missed a couple of nice opportunities for an advantage. Soon the position was equal and then even winning for Black, but So’s subsequent resilience allowed him to scratch back to a slightly worse but drawn ending.

Leinier Dominguez likewise had his opportunities on the black side of a 6.Be3 Najdorf against Raunak Sadhwani, and perhaps five or six times out of 10 he wins it, with at least a draw or two in the remaining games. This was not one of those times. His 20…a4? looked natural, but the brilliant rejoinder 21.Nbd4! gave White a winning advantage. (Had Black preferred 20…Nh7 he would have kept a clear plus.) Sadhwani made subsequent errors that gave Dominguez some chances to stay alive, but a final error by the American, on move 40, led to an almost immediate loss. India 2 thus emerged with a 3-1 victory.

They remain a point (half a point, on normal scoring) behind Armenia (they lost to them back in round 6), and they share second with the other group of youngsters I’ve been praising for a while: Uzbekistan. They defeated the Germans thanks to Nodirbek Yakubboev’s win over Matthias Bluebaum on board 2. The Germans were the higher-rated team on every board but board 1, and even there Vincent Keymer was only two points higher rated than Nodirbek Abdusattorov. It didn’t matter: youth was served.

Three teams are a further point (half a point) behind: Netherlands (3-1 victors over Hungary), Azerbaijan (2.5-1.5 over Kazakhstan), and Iran (2.5-1.5 winners over France, which is, sadly, playing without Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave).

The next group consists of 10 teams, including the U.S. and India 1, but I mention it only to add that the Greeks are there as well. Unfortunately for them and for me, they play the U.S. in round 9.

Speaking of which, here are the top pairings for round 9 (of 11), and here is today’s game selection.

India 2 (14) - Azerbaijan (13)

Uzbekistan (14) - Armenia (15)

Netherlands (13) - Iran (13)

Greece (12) - USA (12)