World Team 08: Goliath beats David

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 8

Kramnik being cheered on by some local fans. The game Ivanchuk-Kramnik was
a draw without any real chances for either side.

The most imporant result of the day was certainly Russia's victory over Ukraine. Kryvoruchko made a huge mistake against Nepomnniachtchi by swinging his queen to the a1 square, where it was swiftly caught in a trap and the Ukrainian had to resign. Had he not done that he would still have had to suffer as his structure was worse but holding a draw was not unthinkable. With all the other games being draws Russia overtakes Ukraine in the match and as the leader of the tournament with one round to spare.

Nepomniachtchi's rooks ensnared the opponent's queen
on the a1 square and brought a huge victory for Russia.
Nepo is now Russia's hero with an amazing 2842 performance.

The Giuoco Piano with an early d4 was no way to put difficulties on Kramnik today

Ukraine actually fell to third place as China has more board points than they do

Egypt was absolutely demolished by Azerbaijan in the tournament's first wipe out. The games at some point seemed rather close; Guseinov was in some problems and Amin had a position only he could win, but some mistakes happened and Azerbaijan did not forgive them.

Despite the 4-0 the games were not as one-sided as the score indicates

A horrible miscalculation by Baramidze allowed Yu Yangyi to get an extra piece in a complicated version of the Breyer Spanish and with this China won against Germany.

Yu Yangyi (second from right to left) gave China the extra half point they needed to topple Germany

Turkey gave USA a huge scare today as they were leading 2-1 for a long time after Robson made some very strange decisions against Esen who simply had a better position with two pieces against a rook as the extra two pawns were not yet a factor. Akobian kept pressing a very slight advantage against Emre Can, who cracked under the pressure and blundered badly to give America the 2-2 tie. Still not a great result for a team that decided to rest their number one player.

A 2-2 tie was not what America was looking for today

Armenia still remains hopeful of obtaining a medal as they squashed the Netherlands by a 3.5-0.5 score, although to be fair this should've been much closer than it was - actually there was a point in which if any team was going to win it would have been the Dutch.

Aronian was simply down a pawn against Giri for very very slight compensation, but a series of inaccuracies allowed the World's number two player to mount an initiative against the queenside pawns of White and further simplifications left Giri in an awkward endgame that he eventually lost. Van Wely had a very pleasant enedgame against Akopian, but he overestimated his chances in the resulting

Aronian's 2929 performance is pretty good

Tigran Petrosian was named after... ok you can guess that one. Armenia's reserve
board has a 2799 performance but only three games played.

Results

Standings

Teams receive two points for a match win, one for a draw and zero for a loss

Replay today's games

Photos by Anastasiya Karlovich

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.