Tromso Olympics, Round 4: Azerbaijan, Bulgaria and Serbia Lead
The presence of Azerbaijan atop the leaderboard isn't so surprising, and they certainly earned their place by defeating the fabulous French team 2.5-1.5 in round 4. The key game was on board 1, between Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Mamedyarov played great early on, achieving a winning position with Black, but as the game grew increasingly complicated Vachier-Lagrave worked his way back into the game, and had he played 34.Qf4+ he might even stand better thanks to his passed a-pawn, despite his pawn deficit. Instead, he went for a little tactic that allowed him to temporarily regain his pawn, but the end result was a lost queen ending that Mamedyarov won in good style.
That Bulgaria and Serbia are also tied for first with 4-0 team scores is a little more surprising, but only a little. Neither team has yet to face one of the favorites, so one should not infer from their score to date that they are at all likely to finish on the podium by the end of the tournament.
Russia and China drew their match, and the last two games to finish had some drama. Vladimir Kramnik had a big advantage against Wang Yue, but made a mistake more commonly seen in amateur play when he "cashed out" prematurely. Kramnik took the opportunity to go an exchange ahead, but in return accepted some structural damage while allowing his opponent's pieces to come alive. Instead of the flashy and greedy 19.Nxf7, 19.b5! would have opened the board beautifully for his bishop pair, and Black probably would have been lost. Later in the game Kramnik even got into trouble, and Wang Yue would have had excellent winning chances had he played 40...Ndc6. Missing his chance, the game soon petered out to a draw, but Alexander Grischuk had to suffer quite a while before finally saving the game against Ding Liren.
There were other matches between 3-0 teams that finished in a draw as well: Uzbekistan vs. Germany and the Netherlands vs. Israel. There are also a good number of teams that won in this round to reach 3.5 team points, including Magnus Carlsen's Norway 1.
In the women's section five teams have perfect scores, including not just the Chinese and Russian teams but the Indonesians, the Hungarians and the Iranians(!) as well.
Finally, both U.S. teams won today, and so both have 3-1 scores. The men will play Canada in round 5, while the women will square off against Azerbaijan.
The games and bulletin can be downloaded from this page.