Tactics from the Olympiad

After the rather mundane super Grandmaster tournament the Sinquefield  cup (please see Radio Jans caustic satirical expose of the gloom) the Olympiad came as refreshing drops of dew on a parched and scorched land. On open tournament with the worlds best players all vying for valours glory! A veritable Aladdin's came of goodies and we were not disappointed.

 Not only were there some amazing team performances, the American ladies dismantling of the Russian ladies was phenomenal, but some great Individual efforts as well.  Latvia's Finance Minister Dana Reizniece-Ozola defeating the reigning ladies world champion Hou Yifan with a rating difference of 400 points! not that it made much difference though! GM Baadur Jobava was like a force of nature on board one for the Georgians and GM Fabiano Caruana produced a beautiful positional and strategic masterpiece against Canadian supremo Evgeny Bareev.  (Please see chess expert David Luscombes excellent analysis here)

 The following are some tactical puzzles taken directly form the games themselves.  Some are relatively easy and some quite difficult and some the players themselves missed! although I have included the game moves.  Its my hope that you get as much enjoyment from solving them as I did when following the games.  Are you ready?

Hopefully you enjoyed solving those. I had originally posted this blog earlier but deleted it by mistake.  Normally I make a video to accompany the blog but I have received so much grief from rather spiteful and hateful people regarding youtube chess videos that I have no real will to make any more.  'you're just a patzer', 'your introductions are too long and pointless', 'you have a stupid accent', 'you're pretending to be something you are not' , 'you will never amount to anything more than a few thousand subscribers' etc. etc. I think Bob Dylan was correct and sometimes you are simply better not creating anything. Anyway thanks for taking the time - regards Robbie.