Tromso Olympics Begin; So Far, No Upsets
Saturday, August 2, 2014 at 10:53PM
Dennis Monokroussos in Tromso Olympics 2014

Or more precisely, no upsets of any significance at the team level; in particular games the (much) stronger player was occasionally nicked for a draw and even the odd loss or so. But the top 14 teams all won 4-0, and one must go all the way down to the 20th seed to find a team that "only" won by a 3-1 margin. Oddly, the strongest team by far to have a lousy result - though still a victorious one - was the main team of the host country: Norway's top team only won 2.5-1.5 over a Yemeni team whose players' FIDE ratings ranged from 2082 to 2396. It's true that Magnus Carlsen took the day off, as did many top teams' first boards, but the Norwegians still put out an all-GM team.

Blowouts were typically the order of the day in the women's section too, and in both the open and women's sections we can expect more of the same tomorrow (or today, depending on where you are). It'll get hotter soon, so stay tuned.

Readers: There are far, far too many games for me to look through, at least with my current schedule, so please help out. If there were some games that really caught your eye let us know in the comments, and if you have ChessBase or some other way to post those games online a direct link would be great!

Tournament site here, round 1 bulletin (in PDF) here.

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