Australian Open Team Defeats Zimbabwe; Women's Team Lose Close Match With Azerbaijan

The second round of the 2024 FIDE Olympiad pitted dangerous teams against top seeds and there were several drawn matches among these clashes. Norway-Canada was one such match where Norway, the higher seeds were left ruing their decision to rest their star player and arguable GOAT GM Magnus Carlsen.

Meanwhile, the first, second, and third seeds all played their top players... for the USA, GM Fabiano Caruana, for India, GM Dommaraju Gukesh, and for China, the reigning world champion GM Ding Liren.

Australia's Open team, proudly sponsored by Integral Diagnostics (IDX)  paired with one of the African continent's best nations, Zimbabwe, who came into the tournament as the 84th seeds and hoped to invoke the spirit of their former board one IM Robert Gwaze who scored 9/9 and won individual gold at the 2002 Olympiad in Bled.

Brushing aside any lingering jet lag, GM Temur Kuybokarov started in style on board one and dispatched IM Farai Mandizha from the white side of a Sicilian Najdorf, Adams Attack. Ironically, the developer and namesake of this opening variation, England's GM Michael Adams was playing on board eight at the same time. 

GM David Smerdon had another crushing performance on board four despite some ailments. As the Captain I was pleased to see one of my favorite openings on the board, the Sicilian Dragon. The cherry on top was that David converted the game in a truly romantic fashion. See if you can spot his finishing blow below...

IM Rishi Sardana's game was the next finished and unfortunately this didn't go the way of the Australian champion. This Australian outfit is all about resilience and teamwork though and seeing his teammate fall, GM Zong-Yuan Zhao stepped up to confirm a 3-1 victory for Australia.

My words of encouragement for the team were that if we win all 11 matches by a 3-1 margin, Olympiad gold is ours.

Azerbaijan, the fifth seeds with an average rating over 2350 posed a formidable threat to our women's team and after a valiant fight, the Aussies went down by a 3-1 margin. Zhiyuan (Flora) Shen scored a landmark draw against IM Gulnar Mammadova with the black pieces and even had winning chances throughout the game while WGM Jilin Zhang miraculously saved half a point from a worse position against WGM Govhar Beydullayeva. 

Incredibly, Flora's effort against her opponent earned her a 99% CAPS score (accuracy rating) according to Chess.com's game review, which immediately makes me feel better for being outplayed by her at the Gold Coast Open recently.

In round three the Open team will play the titanic Ukrainian team who have the likes of legendary GM Vasyl "Chucky" Ivanchuk and former unofficial world champion GM Ruslan Ponomariov on their team. In 2022 we narrowly lost against Ukraine 2.5-1.5 and will look to avenge ourselves.

The women's team will play Nicaragua and are the favorites to win this matchup. Onwards and upwards!