Belgium vs. Canada:

A hard-fought team win today, of my very favourite kind! Two instructive bishop endgames sealed the deal, and in both cases the outcome was brought about by relentless pressure finally inducing the opponent to make a critical mistake.

Bich Ngoc was the first to finish today, with an uneventful draw. The position repeated on move 30, the legal minimum for agreeing to players to agree to a draw, and they shook hands at move 32. I hope Bich Ngoc isn’t feeling unwell or anything like that. All things being equal, a draw with Black is fine for the team, but there was plenty of life left in her position when she repeated moves, and she outrated her opponent by 250 points. She’s in Budapest to play chess, and the grit didn’t seem to be there today. Worse still, Yunshan miscalculated badly in a promising middlegame on Board 2, and she wound up down an exchange (meaning a rook for a minor piece), with a loss looking very likely. Sometimes you can sacrifice an exchange for initiative or positional compensation, but in this case, as the customary trash talk goes, her opponent had the pieces and the compensation, too. For Canada to win the match, either Yunshan would have to manage a desperate turn-around in a dire situation, or we would have to score 2-0 on the remaining boards.

Fortunately, Oksana was in the midst of turning in yet another sterling positional performance on Board 4. Her opponent defended doggedly and nearly managed to hold, but Oksana eventually won by keeping the pressure on and looking for opportunities to strike, without ever being in the slightest danger herself.

Yunshan did go on to lose, leaving Canada’s now veteran team leader, top board Maili-Jade, fighting in the decisive game, with the teams locked at 1.5-1.5. A draw in this final game would mean a disappointing tied match with Belgium, and echoes of Round 4 against Scotland, when Maili-Jade was also the last player standing, struggling for a critical half-point to seal the team victory. In that case, she needed to turn a losing position into a draw; in this one, she needed to turn a drawing position into a win. The game had been pretty much dead equal ever since the players emerged from a Queen’s Gambit Declined. It remained not only equal but close to bone-dry throughout the middlegame and early endgame. Still, in a sharp contrast with the game on Board 3, Maili-Jade spent hours pressing, constantly looking for weaknesses in her opponent, even as the pieces gradually disappeared from the board. The game had passed move 60, and it was getting increasingly hard to imagine any result but a draw, when the Belgian top board finally cracked and made the unforced error that Maili-Jade had been waiting for. It’s very hard to be perfect, in chess as in anything else. Maili-Jade pounced immediately, showed no mercy, and never looked back. It was a fantastic clutch performance, and Canada won the match, 2.5-1.5.

Current record: 3-1-1 (11.5/20), 21st. Next opponent: Bulgaria! (a very strong team led by former Women’s World Champion Antoaneta Stefanova)

The men drew with Turkey today, in another upset. Razvan has a crazy 4.5/5 score, good for a 2801 performance rating so far, just behind Anton Korobov’s 2809 for best on Board 4 in the entire event!

1. Oksana finds a breakthrough

2. Maili-Jade’s patience pays off