The Chess Olympiad (www1.bakuchessolympiad.com) entered its sixth round with a couple major upsets in the open section. One of our pretournament favorites, Russia, captained by the billionaire president of the Russian Chess Federation, Andrey Filatov, surprisingly lost to Ukraine, 2.5-1.5. For some reason, the Russians rested world champion challenger Sergey Karjakin and played the much less experienced Evgeni Tomashevsky instead. He wasn’t up to the task and lost badly to former world champion Ruslan Ponomariov. On board 4, Alexander Grischuk also didn’t distinguish himself in losing to the much lower rated Andrei Volokitin. There’s a lot of pressure on the Russians to regain the title they lost long ago, hence the presence of Filatov as team captain.
The other major upset was another favorite, China, losing to the very surprising Ukrainians, 2.5-1.5 with Yangyi Yu losing to Yuriy Kryvoruchko. Ukraine was 5-0 heading to the sixth round (as are the Indians and the Dutch who face each other next) which is even more surprising as they are playing without their best player, the mercurial Vassily Ivanchuk, who left chess to pursue competitive draughts (checkers).
Next team on the Ukrainians’ schedule is the United States. The US team had what I consider a bad draw against the Czech Republic, even though the US outrated the Czech on every board and now stand in fifth. But with both China and Russian having lost a match, the door is still very much open. I think it all will depend on how they do against Ukraine.
The US women’s team is off to a good start with just a loss to the undefeated Ukrainian women. The team is led by Irina Krush on first board followed by current US women’s champ, Nazi Paikidze, Anna Zatonskih, Katerina Nemcova, and Sabina-Francesca Foisor. They are captained by Yasser Seirawan. It will be an uphill struggle for them to medal as both the much higher rated Ukrainians and Russians have perfect scores.
Coming events: Massachusetts Senior Open, Sept. 17-18, Best Western Royal Plaza Hotel, 181 Boston Post Road West, Marlborough, www.MassChess.org; Boylston Tornado #125, Sept. 17, 40 Norris St., Cambridge.
Recent results: 76th New England Open: Open: 1st: Denys Shmelov, 5.5-.5 2nd: Alexander Ivanov, 5-1; U2000: 1st – 3rd: Alan Sikarov, Paul Godin, Derek Zhao, U1800: 1st-2nd: Kevork Haddad, Robert Sawdey, 5-1; U1600: Zubin Baliga, 5.5-.5.
Answer to today’s problem: The amazing 1.Rg1! wins as now either 1…Rxf2+ or 1…Qxf2+ loses to 2.Kh1+! Or 1…Rb1 2.Rxb1 Qxb1 3.Rc7 wins.
Chris Chase can be reached at BostonGlobeChessNotes@gmail.com.
