The 40th Chess Olympiad is taking place in the Turkish metropole of Istanbul, from August 27 to September 10th, 2012. A record of 158 national chess federations have brought teams to Istanbul to participate in this prestigious event, which is being staged in the WOW Hotel and Convention Center, just minutes away from the airport.

Round six

In the Open section, top seeds Russia and Armenia met with monster mayhem on boards 1 and 2.

Kramnik (above right), with the white pieces, searched for some small opportunity to squeeze his Armenian opponent, and his opportunity came about...

...when Aronian pressed too hard, handing Kramnik the victory. On the board next to them the classic Sasha Grischuk threw himself into an insanely complicated position and lost. The bottom two boards drew their games and the match was tied 2-2.

China delivered blow after massive blow, taking their opponents of Bosnia down with a score of 3.5-0.5. Hungary and Azerbajian dispatched of their opponents, Poland and Croatia, respectively, with score of 3-1. Finally, the USA and German teams held each other to a draw with even scores on all boards. No boards seemed to ever be in any danger of losing their games. The French team beat Finland 2.5-1.5 – Andrew Martin has annotated one of the games in his video report below.

A three-way tie exists for first place with Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan respectively. These results leaves the medal hunt still wide open, with five rounds left to go.

Round six: Top twenty team pairings – Open

In the Women's section, favorites Russia and China squared off. They exchanged losses on boards 1 and 2 respectively and drew on boards 3 and 4 – a near identical repeat of what happened in the Open section. Board 4 was first to complete with a bloodless bishop of opposite color draw, but it soon was to get bloody when WWCC Yifan Hou delivered the death blow to T. Kosintseva. The elder Kosintseva avenged her younger sisters loss by dispatching of her opponent to even up the match score. Board 3 soon drew afterward securing a drawn match.

Russia's lead is now gone, as the ladies of Poland caught up with a massive win. Led by GM Socko, the Poles took out Serbia with a score of 3.5-0.5. Georgia, Ukraine, France and Vietnam have all moved ahead with neat victories in the 6th round. Spain and Hungary exchanged a pair of wins and drew two games to finish the match in a 2-2 tie.

Round six: Top twenty team pairings – Women

Top rankings after six rounds

• Full rankings: Open – Women

Press conference with GM Vladimir Kramnik

Kramnik in the press conference with GM Robert Fontaine and WGM Anastasiya Karlovich

My game against Levon Aronian was really surprising. It went for me quite smoothly. Levon is absolutely a great player in fantastic shape. Of course playing white my task was to try to press him and win. But somehow it went easier for me. Levon had an uncomfortable position out of the opening. Then he missed tactics with Nxb7 or maybe he missed Qb6. I don’t know exactly. But after that it was over and I just had to calculate the variations accurately. To my surprise I manage to do it. Not like in my last two games which were disappointing, especially my game against Wang Hao, such a simple victory which I missed. This time at least I managed to rehabilitate myself and win hopefully a very important game of this match.

Well I thought so, but from another point of view, when you play against such a strong player, you always have doubts maybe he has some ace up his sleeve. When I sacrificed I already saw the situation with Qb6, and all this line with Rb7, Rc6, Rb8, Qb8. I did not really consider Qa8. I thought that after Qa8 I can even play only Kh1 and then B5. But then I calculated b5, the line that I played in the game was not difficult, it was quite simple. I had a feeling that after Ka5 Black’s position is already difficult. I think Rc7 is a mistake. He should have done something else, but Black’s position is already uncomfortable, especially with a pawn on f6. If a pawn would be on f7, something could be done maybe. But f6 pawn is not a fun at all. Then everything worked out tactically.

When you play on the first board, you have only strong opponents who normally participate in the top tournaments. It is like you play in Tal Memorial. The difference is that in Tal Memorial you know against who you are going to play. Here you don’t know and the time control is a bit unusual for me as well. The last time I played this time control was the Olympiad in Khanty Mansiysk. And of course it is not a secret that our goal is to try to win the Olympiad. You understand that it is a lot of pressure and responsibility.

Yuri is just the best coach, maybe the best coach in the world in my opinion. No matter of which team, women’s or men’s. Yuri is really a great coach. He also led Russian women’s team to a success. We are very happy that we have him.

Look who's visiting the Olympiad! Garry Kasparov with his former second Yuri Dohoyan.

Summaries from the official web site,
photos by David Llada, Arman Karakhanyan, Anastasiya Karlovich

Daniel King: Round 5 Play of the Day: Vladimir Kramnik vs Levon Aronian

Andrew Martin: Game of the Day Rd 6: IM Mikael Agopov vs GM Romain Edouard

Full video report of round six

Live video coverage of the Olympiad

Remaining schedule of the Olympiad

Some hours after the end of each round we will be posting video summaries by Daniel King on our news page. If possible they will appear on the same night, otherwise early the next morning. We also expect best-game video commentary from Andrew Martin.

Links Official event web site All available games in zipped PGN: Open + Women All ChessBase reports on the Olympiad The top 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 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.