Life in the Chess Olympiad

Hi everybody!!! I'm back, and today I'm going to fill you in on what happened the past three rounds.  So we'll start with Ireland.  As I said the last post, Ireland rested their board 1, IM Sam Collins against us.  Which was pretty good for us, since in round 1 Collins had drawn against... Alexander Grischuk!!!  So we were pretty relieved to not have to face Ireland's strongest lineup, and our Captain said that we had a chance against them.  However, as Bryan Lee, our board 3, had 2.5/4, he was very much in the running for a FM title, gained by scoring 6/9, so we decided to rest him against these opponents.  I myself was matched up against FM Colm Daly.  I was expecting a type of English opening....

The next match we got... Moldova.  And they have 4 GMs and 1 IM on their team.  I have no idea why they are playing us now.  Ah well, it was my big opportunity to play a Grandmaster.  I was paired against GM Dmitri Svetushkin, whose Fide rating is 2552, a full 792 points above mine.  I don't know how the Maths of this pans out exactly, but I think statistically he should beat me over 99% of the time.    So what can I do against such an overpowering opponent?  I guess I can just try to prepare well, try something a little strange in that favourite Caro-Kan of his...

So tough game I guess.  I guess I should be happy that I managed to have a even, almost slightly better position against a Grandmaster for about 20 moves.  The problem is even after one small mistake things unravell so quickly.  The rest of my team lost too, as was expected, with Bryan and KK losing in long, tough endgames and HK getting mated.  So 4-0 as expected.  Tough....

So thats it for now, later today I'll write about our next match against Nepal, and today's one against Mozambique.

Cheers Everybody!!!

BKJ123