Scotland vs. Canada:

Chess is high drama. Maybe it moves a bit more slowly than many other spectator sports (unless we’re talking about blitz), but the payoff is worth it, especially when you’re following team matches with four games in progress simultaneously, and the players are thinking about the overall match score as well as their own games.

Today was a mixed bag for Canada, in terms of results. The games on the middle two boards were both agreed drawn in the legal minimum number of moves. (In Chennai I actually reached a dead-drawn bishop endgame with Black against Austria and offered to shake hands on move 29. I was mystified when she declined, only to offer a draw herself two moves later, but she explained why after the game! I had forgotten that 30 moves had to be played on the board before the players could agree to a draw.)

Yunshan pressed as White, sacrificing a pawn, and at one point she did have a knockout blow available. After missing that combination, however, she elected to exchange down into a very dry, perfectly level endgame. This reminded me of Bich Ngoc’s decision in the second round. Maybe Yunshan thought the approach of forcing a draw made sense for the team? I’m not sure why, though. She was facing an opponent rated 300+ points lower than herself, and more importantly, the other games weren’t decided. Maybe she simply didn’t see any way to make progress in her position.

I don’t know whether Svitlana or Yunshan drew first, but Svitlana’s game was actually a repetition, coincidentally on the 30th move (repeating a position 3 times results in a draw, even before move 30). She also could have decided to play on in a level position, with a bit more life than remained in Yunshan’s game at the end, but she may not have liked the advanced outpost her opponent had secured for a knight on d6. Or maybe Yunshan was still playing. In that case, Svitlana may also have (justifiably) thought that both Yunshan and Oksana were winning, and therefore her own draw would clinch a match victory for Canada, regardless of the outcome on Board 1.

Oksana’s game was another dominant display of positional understanding. She just outclassed her opponent, start to finish.

That left Maili-Jade still fighting on and needing a draw, with Canada leading 2-1. However, unlike in the previous round, Board 1 was actually our least promising board pairing on paper: Maili-Jade was facing grandmaster Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant, with Black. Arakhamia-Grant has shed a lot of rating points since her peak, but a GM is a GM, and always very dangerous. Maili-Jade played a Caro-Kann, which I can’t exactly condemn, because I play it myself, more than 75% of the time that I have the option. Still, it really surprised me (and likely her opponent), because she normally plays the Sicilian. She did build up a time advantage, but otherwise she didn’t seem all that comfortable in the opening and soon was fighting for her life. She carried on valiantly for hours, until both players were playing on increment (i.e. with only 30 seconds remaining per move), but it always seemed pretty unlikely that she would be able to defend. Then suddenly her GM opponent stumbled, conceding an opportunity to exchange into a drawn opposite-colour bishop endgame. My friend Anthony and I were pretty excited, following in real-time. Then Maili-Jade declined the offer, was given no more chances, and lost the game to drop Canada into a 2-2 tie with Scotland.

Not the ideal result, but it’s not a disaster either, by means. And there’s a lot of tournament left. So far, the lucky breaks just have not been going our way.

Current record: 2-1-1 (9/16), 49th. Next opponent: Monaco.

Our Open team continued its rampage today with a win over Greece, thanks to draws on the top three boards and a very clean strategic win by Nikolay Noritsyn opposite a somewhat anemic King’s Indian Attack on Board 4.

Another endgame oversight costs the team a critical half-point.

A third picture-perfect position from Oksana out of the opening.

White is winning at least a pawn immediately.