Olympics, Round 10: Ukraine Still Leads With a Round to Go
Friday, October 1, 2010 at 2:42PM
Dennis Monokroussos in Olympics 2010

Ukraine rolled France today, 3.5-.5, and enter the last round with a one point lead over Russia 1, which defeated China 2.5-1.5 (thanks to an endgame win by Grischuk over Wang Hao). They've already played, so the Russians do not have their fate in their own hands going into the last round.

Ukraine will face Israel, who defeated the US 3-1 and are in clear third a point behind Russia 1. The match was hard-fought on three of the boards, but was essentially decided by the Sutovsky-Kamsky massacre on board two. (Not a nice way for Kamsky's erstwhile second to repay his former employer!)

Russia 1 will face Spain, which beat Georgia 3-1. Tied with Spain in fourth place are Poland and Hungary (facing each other) and France and Armenia (ditto). In an easier to read format, these are the top last round pairings:

1. Israel (16) - Ukraine (18)

2. Russia 1 (17) - Spain (15)

3. Poland (15) - Hungary (15)

4. France (15) - Armenia (15)

Everyone else is out in the cold, when it comes to the team medals. Of course, individual performances are interesting too. You can find a list of the players ranked by their performance ratings so far on this page; interestingly, Ivanchuk is only #2, behind Sutovsky! Aronian, who is fourth on the list, won today while Topalov lost, and that should put him at #3 on the Live Top List once it takes today's results into account. Also dropping, though still #1, is Carlsen, who was demolished today by Kalmykian youngster Sjugirov in just 25 moves. (Well, there's always fashion modeling if that whole chess thing doesn't work out.)

Other games of possible interest: Shirov defeated Jobava in an utterly spectacular game, and Magem's win over Pantsulaia was flashy too. The Smeets-Short game was pretty weird: Short played the Caro-Kann, which I didn't think was part of his repertoire, and Smeets of course responded with the Short Variation of the Advance. The ending was surprising, too. Short had king, g- and h-pawns against king and h-pawn, with no blockaded pawns, and didn't win. Maybe there was no win there (I haven't checked the tablebases or even spent the time to work it out on my own), but if there isn't it's an unusual situation.

Official site here, all the interesting information on this site.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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