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12/09/2024 FIDE Chess Olympiad 2024 Round 2
Entering round 2, both England teams were in the top half of their score groups and so received opponents relatively weaker than themselves. Thus two won matches for England would – fingers crossed – be the outcome. Papua New Guinea, on the other hand, were in the bottom half of their score group and so could expect to lose, though with any luck by a narrower margin than before.
Papua New Guinea’s match was a little odd, as represented on the “live” broadcast. Their board one went a piece down, cruised on to a position where his resignation would be appropriate, yet the result on the broadcast game was “½‑½”! [The result later appeared on chess_results.com as “0‑1”.] Their board two turned out a respectable win which was duly shown as such. Their board 4 lost as Black in the following 5-move game, IFF you believe the live broadcast: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nc3 Bd6 (really?) 4. d4 exd4 5. Nxd4 Bc4 1-0. Maybe there was another “loose connection” and a complete game was played. That will become evident when links to games are added over night. [Next day, chess_results.com, gave that same 5-move game in its game play-through links.] On board 3, Rupert Jones developed what looked quite a promising middlegame, but his opponent hit back – they do that sometimes – and queened a pawn forcing Rupert to sacrifice a knight on it. He then manoeuvred to eliminate his opponent’s pawns in the hope of reaching the ending of K versus K and two knights, which is of course drawn with proper play. His opponent sensibly left Rupert with one remaining pawn presumably hoping it would give Rupert moves in positions in which he was otherwise stalemated. Rupert arguably made the mistake of allowing his king to be cornered enabling his opponent to stampede down to the corner with both knights, leaving Rupert’s pawn to run. The result was that his opponent could achieve mate on the move after Rupert’s pawn queened!
More-sober play prevailed in the England Open match. McShane won while Vitiugov (an emigrée Russian now in England) and Adams both drew. That left Howell a pawn or two to the better, with no problem at least drawing.
England Women continued to make relatively light work of winning 3-1. ” To play through one of the following games on screen, click on “play” to the right:
Results were as follows.
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