Friday
Sep242010
Olympiad, Round 3: And Then There Were 14
Friday, September 24, 2010 at 2:05AM
Actually, there's still around 170, but only 14 teams still have perfect scores after three rounds. Here are the pairings for those teams for round 4:
1. Russia 2 - India
2. Hungary - China
3. Armenia - Russia 3
4. Netherlands - Spain
5. Russia 1 - USA
6. Georgia - Norway
7. Estonia - Vietnam
About that Russia - USA matchup, here - so I've been told - is what Hikaru Nakamura posted on his Facebook page:
"Huge, huge match today. US-RUSSIA!! Time to crush Kramnik like a bug and get revenge for my homeboy Yan Teplitsky!"
We shall see! Nakamura will have Black, so if it'll be all the more impressive if he can live up to his boast.
Reader Comments (5)
You know Carlsen said he was going to "Crush Kramnik like a bug!" at Corus and the reverse happened. So maybe Nakamura should use a different word choice. I guess we'll see. Go USA!
Well, a pretty exciting game resulted out of the trash talk, although I am pretty sure Nakamura was joking with his statement. Nice play by Polgar as well. I don't know the statistics, but I am convinced that the Philidor does not do well, on average, at this level.
when will he learn not to boast? He needs to be humble for himself and also for chess!
A curious "oversight":
Ibraimo - Rwamavubi in round 2: 1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3.Bc4 Bg4 4.d3 Qf6 5.c3 Bxf3 6.Qxf3 Qxf3 7.gxf3 Nf6 8.Rg1 Nbd7 9.Be3 c6 10.a3 d5 11.exd5 cxd5 12.Bb5 a6 13.Bxd7+ Nxd7 14.f4 exf4 15.Bxf4 Nc5 16.Ke2 0-0-0 17.d4 Re8+ ( a check is always useful .. ) 18.Be3 g6?? ( ja, ja, ja; it seems Burundi's player have forgot suddenly his knight !? ) ... logically 19.dxc5 +- 1 - 0 (45).
This happens if somebody play a "virtuous" check but after he forget the whole of the game ....
I want to like Nakamura, but I cringe every time he is interviewed. He just comes across as overly arrogant. If he was World Champ, that's one thing, but as it is it just makes him look bad when he can't back it up. I think it was on ChessVibes they had a video of the closing ceremony of the Experience vs. Youth tournament and Nakamura said something to the effect that in the last round player X had a good game - for once. Now maybe player X is cool with the playful dig, but based on the facial expressions of everyone else onstage, it just came across as an insult. He is very talented, but needs to learn some humility.