Round 6 Preview

Fecha de publicación:

8 August 2014

Imagen principal:

In terms of team clashes Round 6 of the Chess Olympiad is perhaps not quite the blockbuster we’ve been used to – Armenia-England looks the most finely-balanced top encounter – but we’ve got nothing to complain about when it comes to individual games. Magnus Carlsen takes on his great rival Fabiano Caruana, while other big games include Mamedyarov-Jobava, Kasimdzhanov-Kramnik, Le Quang Liem-Leko and Adams-Aronian.

Players of the stature of Magnus Carlsen have often been reluctant to play in Olympiads when their team is not among the favourites. They tend to end up playing weaker players and risk heavy ratings losses if something goes wrong. Carlsen himself suffered in the 2010 Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk, but so far in Tromsø that hasn’t been an issue. After meeting Radek Wojtaszek (2735) in his third game he came up against Armenian world no. 2 Levon Aronian (2805), and now he faces Italian world no. 3 Fabiano Caruana.

Or if you take live ratings into account (updated each day, not each month) it gets even stranger!

Among matches the top table pairing of Azerbaijan-Georgia sees a meeting of regional rivals and friends (Azerbaijan oil money funds the Georgian Chess Federation), while England-Armenia (Adams-Aronian on top board) is clearly a match to watch! Can the strong England side further damage the chances of Armenia defending their Olympiad title?

Rustam Kasimdzhanov has enjoyed a fine tournament so far | photo: Georgios Souleidis, chess24

Intrigue elsewhere includes the top pairing of Uzbekistan-Russia, with Rustam Kasimdzhanov taking on Vladimir Kramnik. Both players are in fine form, with former FIDE World Champion Kasimdzhanov having defeated Arkadij Naiditsch and Vassily Ivanchuk in consecutive rounds. A win against Kramnik would take Rustam to his highest ever rating. After pointing this out to him yesterday at dinner... and quickly apologising for possibly jinxing him, Rustam replied, “There’s no such thing as jinxes”!

The top pairings are as follows:

Round 6 on 2014/08/08 at 14:00
Bo.	8	Azerbaijan (AZE)	Rtg	-	21	Georgia (GEO)	Rtg	0 : 0
1.1	GM	Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar	2743	-	GM	Jobava, Baadur	2713
1.2	GM	Radjabov, Teimour	2724	-	GM	Mchedlishvili, Mikheil	2618
1.3	GM	Mamedov, Rauf	2659	-	GM	Nigalidze, Gaioz	2542
1.4	GM	Safarli, Eltaj	2649	-	GM	Shanava, Konstantine	2563
Bo.	29	Serbia (SRB)	Rtg	-	18	Bulgaria (BUL)	Rtg	0 : 0
2.1	GM	Ivanisevic, Ivan	2613	-	GM	Topalov, Veselin	2772
2.2	GM	Perunovic, Milos	2602	-	GM	Cheparinov, Ivan	2681
2.3	GM	Markus, Robert	2602	-	GM	Iotov, Valentin	2553
2.4	GM	Indjic, Aleksandar	2539	-	IM	Dimitrov, Radoslav	2461
Bo.	20	Italy (ITA)	Rtg	-	14	Norway (NOR)	Rtg	0 : 0
3.1	GM	Caruana, Fabiano	2801	-	GM	Carlsen, Magnus	2877
3.2	GM	David, Alberto	2565	-	GM	Hammer, Jon Ludvig	2628
3.3	GM	Vocaturo, Daniele	2587	-	GM	Johannessen, Leif Erlend	2528
3.4	GM	Brunello, Sabino	2560	-	GM	Lie, Kjetil A.	2528
Bo.	13	Cuba (CUB)	Rtg	-	49	Kazakhstan (KAZ)	Rtg	0 : 0
4.1	GM	Dominguez Perez, Leinier	2760	-	GM	Ismagambetov, Anuar	2531
4.2	GM	Bruzon Batista, Lazaro	2664	-	GM	Kotsur, Pavel	2559
4.3	GM	Quesada Perez, Yuniesky	2649	-	GM	Kostenko, Petr	2461
4.4	GM	Ortiz Suarez, Isan Reynaldo	2603	-	IM	Aitbayev, Aslan	2425
Bo.	33	Uzbekistan (UZB)	Rtg	-	1	Russia (RUS)	Rtg	0 : 0
5.1	GM	Kasimdzhanov, Rustam	2700	-	GM	Kramnik, Vladimir	2760
5.2	GM	Filippov, Anton	2615	-	GM	Grischuk, Alexander	2795
5.3	GM	Dzhumaev, Marat	2510	-	GM	Svidler, Peter	2751
5.4	IM	Vakhidov, Jahongir	2471	-	GM	Nepomniachtchi, Ian	2714
Bo.	42	Bosnia & Herzegovina (BIH)	Rtg	-	3	France (FRA)	Rtg	0 : 0
6.1	GM	Predojevic, Borki	2604	-	GM	Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime	2768
6.2	GM	Dizdarevic, Emir	2522	-	GM	Bacrot, Etienne	2720
6.3	GM	Stojanovic, Dalibor	2503	-	GM	Fressinet, Laurent	2708
6.4	IM	Kadric, Denis	2473	-	GM	Tkachiev, Vladislav	2624
Bo.	24	Croatia (CRO)	Rtg	-	72	Indonesia (INA)	Rtg	0 : 0
7.1	GM	Saric, Ivan	2671	-	GM	Megaranto, Susanto	2527
7.2	GM	Stevic, Hrvoje	2606	-	IM	Farid, Firman Syah	2400
7.3	GM	Kozul, Zdenko	2608	-		Ali Lutfi, Muhammad	2339
7.4	GM	Zelcic, Robert	2548	-	CM	Setyaki, Azarya Jodi	2186
Bo.	7	China (CHN)	Rtg	-	38	Egypt (EGY)	Rtg	0 : 0
8.1	GM	Wang, Yue	2718	-	GM	Amin, Bassem	2627
8.2	GM	Ding, Liren	2742	-	IM	Ezat, Mohamed	2466
8.3	GM	Yu, Yangyi	2668	-	GM	Adly, Ahmed	2589
8.4	GM	Ni, Hua	2666	-	GM	El Gindy, Essam	2486
Bo.	31	Vietnam (VIE)	Rtg	-	5	Hungary (HUN)	Rtg	0 : 0
9.1	GM	Le, Quang Liem	2710	-	GM	Leko, Peter	2740
9.2	GM	Nguyen, Ngoc Truong Son	2634	-	GM	Balogh, Csaba	2637
9.3	IM	Nguyen, Duc Hoa	2501	-	GM	Almasi, Zoltan	2690
9.4	IM	Nguyen, Huynh Minh Huy	2507	-	GM	Polgar, Judit	2676
Bo.	11	Netherlands (NED)	Rtg	-	39	Iran (IRI)	Rtg	0 : 0
10.1	GM	Giri, Anish	2745	-	GM	Moradiabadi, Elshan	2598
10.2	GM	L'Ami, Erwin	2631	-	IM	Idani, Pouya	2499
10.3	GM	Tiviakov, Sergei	2664	-	GM	Toufighi, Homayoon	2424
10.4	GM	Van Kampen, Robin	2638	-	GM	Golizadeh, Asghar	2490
Bo.	58	Norway 2 (NOR2)	Rtg	-	16	Czech Republic (CZE)	Rtg	0 : 0
11.1	IM	Urkedal, Frode	2500	-	GM	Navara, David	2716
11.2	IM	Hansen, Torbjorn Ringdal	2450	-	GM	Laznicka, Viktor	2676
11.3	IM	Tari, Aryan	2440	-	GM	Hracek, Zbynek	2634
11.4		Salomon, Johan	2353	-	GM	Babula, Vlastimil	2549
Bo.	10	England (ENG)	Rtg	-	4	Armenia (ARM)	Rtg	0 : 0
12.1	GM	Adams, Michael	2740	-	GM	Aronian, Levon	2805
12.2	GM	Jones, Gawain C B	2665	-	GM	Sargissian, Gabriel	2686
12.3	GM	Short, Nigel D	2665	-	GM	Movsesian, Sergei	2672
12.4	GM	Sadler, Matthew D	2653	-	GM	Akopian, Vladimir	2655

Full pairings for both men and women, with handy clickable flags to jump straight to a particular team, can be found here.

The women’s pairings

The same that was said about the open event applies to the women’s event, but even more so. Most matches have clear favourites, and you perhaps have to scroll down to a match like India-Spain to find a contest that’s close on paper (India are higher rated on two boards, but lower rated on the other two). One big game to look out for is Anna Muzychuk (Ukraine) vs. Antoaneta Stefanova (Bulgaria).