Coming into round 6 of the Olympiad India was in sole first with a 6-0 score, an achievement made all the more remarkable giving that they are playing without Viswanathan Anand. Perhaps they hadn't missed him up until then, but in round 7 against the U.S. team things were a bit more difficult for them than they had been: the U.S. won decisively, 3.5-.5. Pentala Harikrishna drew with White against Fabiano Caruana, and the rest of the team was shut out. It was a great result for the Americans and a harsh one for India, but at the end of the day the U.S. is in first, but only half a point in front of India and five other teams, and there are still four rounds to go.
The U.S. will next play the Russian squad, which also won in a rout, defeating the Czechs by the same score, 3.5-.5. On board 4 Vlastimil Babula drew with White against Alexander Grischuk, and that was the sum total of their scoring. The board 1 game between Sergey Karjakin and David Navara was especially brutal - just a very bad day for Navara.
The board 2 pairing for round 8 is Georgia vs. Ukraine. The Georgians defeated Romania 2.5-1.5, while Ukraine bounced back from their round 6 loss against the U.S. to eke out a 2.5-1.5 win over Canada.
On board 3 there's England against India, and England gets loads of credit for beating the Chinese team 3-1. Mickey Adams somehow managed to outplay Wang Yue on board 1 on the white side of a Petroff, while on board 4 Nigel Short fought off a furious attack by Li Chao in a spectacular game.
Finally, on board 4 the Azerbaijanis, who are half a point out of the second-place tie after crushing Croatia 3.5-.5, will be taking on the last of the second-place teams: Latvia. The Latvians have been a surprise so far, especially since Alexei Shirov has not been in particularly good form thus far. In round 7 he did enough, drawing Anish Giri with the white pieces, while his teammates on board 2 and board 4 defeated higher-rated Dutch players with Black to win the match 3-1.
On the women's side, everything is up in the air as five teams are tied for first with 6-1 scores: Russia, China, Azerbaijan, the United States and the Netherlands. The leading pairings for round 8 are Russia-USA, Poland (half a point back) - Netherlands, and China-Azerbaijan.
Some games that caught my eye are here.