China Wins World Team Championship
Considering that the Chinese team won last year's Olympiad in Tromso, it's not all that surprising that they won the World Team Championship this year as well. Their team went an undefeated +6=3 to come in first with 15 match points, well ahead of the runner-up team from Ukraine which went +5-2=2 (12 points) and the third-placed Armenians (+5-3=1, 11 match points). On board 1 they were led by 22-year-old Ding Liren (TPR 2794), who is now 11th in the world (2757.4 - I think both marks are records for Chinese players, but I could be wrong about this), while the top score (7/9) and highest TPR (2825) was turned in by 15-year-old wunderkind Wei Yi. He's now 2717.5 and #34 in the world.
Russia and the U.S. tied for fourth-fifth on match points (10 apiece, based on identical +4-3=2 scores), with Russia coming out ahead on board points. Still, the U.S. team's Aleks Lenderman gets some bragging rights, as he had the largest rating gain of the tournament, picking up 19 Elo points (thanks to a 2788 TPR) to reach a 2636 rating. After a draw with Yu Yangyi, a loss to Zoltan Almasi and a draw with Sergei Movsesian he caught fire, finishing with wins over Samy Shoker, Emil Sutovsky, Vasil Ivanchuk and Lazaro Bruzon.
Some other outstanding TPRs: Levon Aronian (2805 - probably his best performance in quite some time), Yuriy Kryvoruchko (2799) and Yuniesky Quesada Perez (2783). Here are the full team scores for the event:
- 1. China 15 (23 board points)
- 2. Ukraine 12 (21)
- 3. Armenia 11 (18)
- 4. Russia 10 (20.5)
- 5. USA 10 (19.5)
- 6. Hungary 9 (17)
- 7. Israel 8 (18.5 - more than Armenia, which shows that when you win can be more important than how often you win)
- 8. Cuba 7 (16.5)
- 9. India 7 (16)
- 10. Egypt 1 (10)
Reader Comments (6)
I think you are half right and half wrong about Ding Liren's achievement: Wang Yue, by now virtually forgotten, was world #10 in November 2010 with Elo 2756.
[DM: I thought he might have been close. Thanks for that.]
Wang Yue was world #8 in May 2010. I think that's the record for a Chinese player.
The comment on Israel - "when you win can be more important than how often you win" is incorrect. Armenia has significantly more match points than Israel, so they won "more often" than Israel. Rather, it should be revised to: "how often you win is more important than how much you win by"
[DM: "They" in your second sentence is ambiguous. I was of course referring to wins in individual games, as the Armenian team obviously won more often than the Israeli team - that's why they finished ahead of them. Obviously my comment makes no sense at all the way you've interpreted it, so why interpret it that way?]
If board points mattered more than match points (which was actually the case in the past, until 2005), Russia would have won bronze and the standings from 3rd to 7th place would have been quite different.
The key is that the _margin_ of victory (or loss!) in single matches doesn't matter at all, unless teams are tied on match points in the end.
The difference between Armenia and Israel is basically due to two results: Armenia-China 0,5-3.5 and Israel-India 3.5-0.5 - all other matches from both teams, and most matches of the entire event, were close: 2.5-1.5 for one team or 2-2 (for both teams :) ).
It's interested to compare the four highest-rated Chinese players who participated with the four who did not.
Their average ratings are almost equal.
1) Ding Liren 2757 vs Li Chao 2748
2) Yu Yangyi 2723 vs Wang Yue 2724
3) Wei Yi 2718 vs Wang Hao 2710
4) Bu Xiangzhi 2696 vs Ni Hua 2701
A Chinese team of Li Chao, Wang Yue, Wang Hao, and Ni Hua could have contended for the medals.
Given that China wins the Maths Olympiad every time, this is the start of a trend in Chess.