Tromso Olympics, Round 10: China, Russian Lead the Open & Women's Sections, Respectively
One round remains in the Tromso Olympics, and it will be played on Thursday, after the second (and final) rest day. At this point, each section has a clear leader, and as both leaders are facing teams with considerably lower ratings their chances of victory look excellent.
In the open section, China and France shared first entering the round, and were matched. Three games were drawn, and the decisive battle was on board three between Laurent Fressinet and Yu Yangyi. Fressinet had White and hoped for a position where Black's static pawn weaknesses would prove the deciding factor, but he always lacked the tempo or so needed to keep his opponent from having enough activity to compensate. I suspect that 21.Rd6 was played in hopes of bailing out to a draw, but it was inaccurate. Black soon won a pawn, and as he maintained the more active position as well he went on to win the game without much trouble.
The Hungarian team is in a surprising second place, solo, after beating Romania 3-1. Their path to second was sneaky, but there they are, a point behind China and a point ahead of eight other teams, which are listed in their current tiebreak order: France, Ukraine (drew with Azerbaijan this round), Russia (beat Serbia), the United States of America (beat rather than drew with Argentina by a miracle, as Mareco was crushing Onischuk before letting him sneak out with a draw; also noteworthy was Shankland's win, bringing his total score to 8.5/9), Uzbekistan (beat the Netherlands), India (beat Germany(!); imagine if they had Anand playing for them!), Azerbaijan and Poland (overcame a loss on board 1 to Topalov to beat the Bulgarians). Here are the last round pairings involving these teams:
Poland - China, Hungary - Ukraine, Russia - France, Azerbaijan - USA, India - Uzbekistan.
Also of note: the Armenian team, which has been extremely successful in olympiads over the past dozen years or so, was held to a draw by Vietnam and is out of the running. Also of interest was the 3.5-.5 shellacking of Norway by the Croatian team. Ivan Saric massacred Magnus Carlsen on board 1, and it was as if that drained the spirit out of the Norwegians. Immediately after Carlsen resigned, Kjetl Lie made a series of blunders that took him from an equal position to the loss of two rooks and mate. (The last rook and the mate may have been deliberate, but even without that the collapse was stunning.) Jon Ludwig Hammer's position also rapidly disintegrated after Carlsen's resignation as well, and match that looked like a toss-up suddenly turned into a rout. Headed into the last round, the Norwegian first and second teams are tied with 12 match points apiece.
To the women's section: Russia still enjoys the solo lead despite losing to Ukraine. Kateryna Lagno escaped punishment on board 1, getting an easy draw with Black against Anna Muzychuk, but justice was served (if justice it be) on board 4, somewhat ironically by Natalia Zhukova's win over Olga Girya. (The irony is that Zhukova is married to a Russian, Alexander Grischuk.) The Ukranian team is now a single match point behind Russia, and so is China. China could have caught the Russians, but although Hou Yifan did her job the Chinese third board lost with the white pieces to Ana Matnadze, whom she outrated by 100 points. In the last round Russia plays Bulgaria, and on paper that looks like an easy win for Russia. Bulgaria has Antoaneta Stefanova, who is a solid GM, but after that the team is made up of mostly 2300s. China and Ukraine will face each other, and a point behind them Germany still has a shot at the medals; they will face Georgia.
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