World Team 02: USA 3-1 Russia

The World Chess Team Championship is currently being held in Antalya, Turkey. The tournament runs from November 26th to December 5th. The tournament is a round robin tournament between the best countries in the world who are sending their top participants. The event will have zero tolerance rules, no draw offers for the first 30 moves and will be played under the standard team tournament system with two points given to a match winner, one for a draw and zero the the loser of a match. Tiebreaks will be decided by board points. The time control is the FIDE 90 minutes for 40 moves and an additional 30 minutes at move 40 with thirty second increment throughout the game.

Round 2

The big news of the day is of course USA's win against Russia. This is the second year in a row that America topples the Russian powerhouse - in the 2012 Olympiad they were also victorious. In both ocassions Hikaru Nakamura was able to defeat Vladimir Kramnik with the white pieces. Today Kramnik committed a series of strange mistakes allowing Nakamura to slowly pile on the pressure. A miscalculation left Kramnik in a lost endgame simply down a piece.

Nakamura defeated Kramnik last year inthe Olympiad and did so again today

Kamsky almost looked impeccable today. At least his cap matched.

Grischuk and Nepomniachtchi had no real winning chances against Kamsky and Onischuk and they ended in a peaceful draws. The last board of the match was the shortest:

An important win by Ray Robson secured America's victory

Grischuk wondering if America has Russia's number

Wisn by Ivanchuk and Korobov gave Ukraine a win over China. Admittedly this could have gone either way as Ivanchuk must surely have been dead lost with his king on f6 in an exchange slav. It is not clear how this happened, but it happened. Caruana's comment on the game:

Armenia decided to rest Aronian but that was still a sufficiently strong team to beat Egypt 3-1 without too many complications.

Amin Bassem is Egypt's highest rated player. Their second highest, Ahmed Adly, was unable to participate.

In the Netherlands vs. Azerbaijan match Loek Van Wely blundered in a drawn rook endgame and that gave Safarli an unexpected win. Meanwhile Sokolov broke under the pressure of Nidjat Mamedov who wins his second game in a row. This gives Azerbaijan a 3-1 victory. Azerbaijan is tied with first with Germany and Ukraine.

A win by Mamedov helped Azerbaijan beat the Netherlands. Not this one though, this one is Rauf Mamedov who drew Giri today.

Naidtisch took advantage of a big mistake by his opponent in a complicated Poisoned Pawn variation of the Najdorf to win against Yilmaz. Meanwhile Meier showed excellent technique and won a French endgame against Solak, giving Germany a 3-1 win and a tie for first place as they have won both of their matches.

Germany convincingly took out the host country

Replay today's games

Photos by Fatma Koc Ozturk

Links Official tournament site PGN of all games The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.