Olympiad, Round 5: Russia, Armenia Lead
Now there are just two teams with perfect 10-point scores at the 2012 Olympiad: Russian and Armenia. Russia defeated Hungary 2.5-1.5 on the strength of Grischuk's attacking win over Almasi, while Aronian's crushing victory against Ivanchuk propelled the Armenians to a 2.5-1.5 victory over Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine will play in round 6 on Monday, after tomorrow's rest day.
Azerbaijan is a point behind, unsurprisingly - they heavily outrated Canada and crushed them 3.5-.5. But what is surprising is that they are currently tied for third-fourth with Croatia, who were serious underdogs against France but won on two boards and took the match 2.5-1.5. They (the Azeris and the Croats) will play on Monday.
No fewer than 17 teams have eight points, including the U.S., who drew with the Czechs in round 5 with four quick draws. The Americans will take on Germany on board 3 come Monday.
The rest of the pairings are here - hope my readers' teams are doing well!
Reader Comments (4)
Hi Dennis,
greetings to Greece, and thanks for all your posts! I am following the Olympics every day a little bit. It´s a great festival, despite the bad vibrations brought in by FIDE and the Turkish organizer.
So, let´s see about tomorrow. It will be Germany against the US boys - interesting to follow (for me). Are you happy about the Greek results so far? I like Kotronias who is a great fighter.
Bye, and all the best
Olaf
PS Fingers crossed for the Greek team!
PS 2 By the way, the spam control is giving me headaches ... I just cannot get through, it´s reeeally hard to decipher the words at times.
[DM: Olaf, thanks for the nice comment and the well-wishes for the Greek team. Though I am an American, I'm obviously of (part) Greek ancestry, have been to Greece many times and love it there, and I do root for their chess team. (Though I wouldn't root for Makropoulos if he were playing.) Their result so far would be good if they were scoring by board points rather than match points, but since it is match points there result is only fair at best: three 4-0 sweeps against weak teams and two 3-1 losses. Losing to Russia 3-1 isn't bad - that can happen to anyone - but losing by that score to Montenegro was terrible.
Sorry about the capcha screens - that's done automatically.]
I agree with Olag about the capcha's. They are much more difficult to decipher than on most other sites. Sometimes it takes me several tries to get past them!
If the German team is a "chessic barometer", Montenegro isn't that bad but as strong as Azerbaijan and the USA - Germany played 2-2 against all teams (though they had beaten Montenegro rather convincingly at the European Team Championship). Seriously, Montenegro seems to be be in form and what would the Olympiad be without surprises? Though no one likes 'his' team to be on the 'wrong' side of a surprising result ... I am no exception.
"hope my readers' teams are doing well"
I am quite satisfied until now. My team did very well against the Dominican Republic in the 2nd round. Gajadin managed to draw the GM Markus Ragger, whose ELO is 500 points higher. Alas we lost against the Dutch Antillians (AHO), which shouldn't have happened.