2012 Chess Olympiad Underway

The 40th Chess Olympiad got underway today in Instanbul, with the usual first round of organised chaos, technical glitches and one-sided contests for the heavyweight teams against weaker opposition.

The individual board pairings always spring an upset or two, and the biggest individual shock of the first round was Sergey Movsesian's loss on board 1 for 3rd seeds Armenia against Osvaldo Zambrana (Elo 2471) of 80th seeded Bolivia.  However, Armenia won on the other boards to take a 3-1 match victory.

Ukraine started their campaign with a comfortable 4-0 win against Iraq, and the US achieved the same perfect score against Jordan.

Wang Yue dropped half a point to Stanley Chumfwa (Elo 2347) in China's 3½-½ victory over Zambia, while Loek van Wely was another high profile casualty, losing to Tze-Meng Mok (Elo 2354) as the Netherlands eked out a narrow 2½-1½ win against Malaysia.

The official coverage is still getting its act together, but the results on the live games page are hopefully reasonably accurate.  Unfortunately, no PGN files of the games seem to have emerged just yet! [UPDATE: GAMES NOW ADDED]

Alexander Grischuk (left) helped Russia to a 3½-½ win against the Dominican Republic

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Judit Polgar won her game as Hungary beat Kyrgyzstan 3-1

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The Russian women's team thrashed Bolivia 4-0 to start their Olympiad campaign

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Gata Kamsky and Irina Krush both won as both US teams started with 4-0 victories

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Photos from the official website's photo page, except for Kamsky and Krush by Tony Rich for the CCSCSL.