Favorites Win at World Teams, Two Rounds To Go

The World Team Championship is about to reach its climax with just two rounds to go in Kemer, Antalya (Turkey). On Tuesday all the favorites won their important matches: tournament leader Ukraine beat Egypt (but only with 2.5-1.5), Russia outclassed the Netherlands 3.5-0.5 and the matches Armenia-Turkey, USA-Germany and China-Azerbaijan all ended in 3-1.

All photos courtesy of the Turkish Chess Federation

Let's start at the top, were Ukraine was the seventh team in a row to beat Egypt. With Vassily Ivanchuk enjoying a rest day (or starting his preparation for Kramnik!), Anton Korobov moved up to first board. As the only player to lose the day before against the Netherlands, he surely wanted a win here and, after many complications, he managed to do so in timetrouble.

Egypt's Bassem Amin, a doctor in Cairo when not playing chess, is doing quite well in Kemer. He won another white game, playing the Sicilian Bobby Fischer style:

The Netherlands had won four matches in a row, but against the strong Russians it went wrong on several boards. Vladimir Kramnik easily parried Anish Giri's piece sac in a a Slav:

Sergey Tiviakov's 3...Qd6 Scandinavian was good enough for a draw against Alexander Grischuk, but both Loek van Wely and Ivan Sokolov lost with the white pieces:

After his shaky draw with Georg Meier, Levon Aronian won a good game against Alexander Ipatov, part of Armenia's 3-1 win over Turkey.

Another player who is on a slight rating plus in Turkey is Hikaru Nakamura. America's #1 is in fact just 1.5 rating points behind Kramnik in the live rating list. You could say that he beat Meier in Carlsen style, if Nakamura wasn't known as that other top GM who plays for a win in almost every game.

From the same match, don't miss this game:

A nice game from the China-Azerbaijan match was the following, a fine example of the Steel King (known in Dutch as 'winnende wandelkoning', literally translated as 'winning wanderking' which sounds a bit weird).

In the eighth round the pairings are Egypt - Azerbaijan, Germany - China, Turkey - USA, Netherlands - Armenia and the most important one of the whole tournament, Ukraine - Russia.

World Team Championship 2013 | Round 7 standings