FIDE World Team Championship: China crushes Belarus

All photos by Anastasia Balakhontseva

Some of my warmest memories of my own chessplaying days are connected with World Team Championships. In the 1990's those events were held in the beautiful town of Lucerne, Switzerland. Ten teams, selected by a mix of geographical representation and placings in the previous Chess Olympiad, would get together for a round-robin event. The U.S. Team I was honored to be a part of won gold in 1993 and barely missed the repeat gold performance in 1997, finishing in second place.

CEO of FIDE, Geoffrey Borg is also a strong player in his own right, rated 2367

Now, two decades later, a new generation of players gathered together in the Siberian oil capitol of Khanty-Mansiysk.

There are two tournaments running alongside, the Men's and Women's events. In anticipation of angry comments by some readers, I will state that I find the modern moniker of “open”, at best, unnecessary. Lots of female players participated in Men's events way before the current fashion of political correctness, and I don't recall any complaints from Nona Gaprindashvili, Maia Chiburdanidze or the Polgar sisters. Neither was any slight intended in my not selecting any women's games for this report. I always follow Women's events closely, and will make sure to include some coverage of their Championship in my future reports.

To the main part now. The blind luck of the draw could have paired favorites against one another in round one, but as it went, the highest-rated teams thus time avoided face-to-face encounters.

Top-seed China, with a 2746 average rating, demolished the Belarus squad 3.5-0.5. Both Yu Yangyi and Wei Yi are not in the world's Top 20.

Rating leader and defending Champion, the Chinese team did a convincing demolition job on Belarus, only surrendering one draw, and the same score was registered in Russia-Egypt, but I'd like to point out the draw on board one. Ian Nepomniatchtchi continues to shed rating points in anticipation of his Grand Chess Tour debut later this year. Look out for Nepo to be a major contender there, as I refer to constant oscillations at the top of chess rankings being an indicator of the worse you play before the main event, the better your chances are in it.

Ian Nepomniachtchi was a powerful performer for the Russian team in the Baku Olympiad

The United States managed to squeak by Norway, sans Magnus Carlsen, by a minimal margin, provided by a Var Akobian's smooth technical victory over Frode Elsness. Speaking of Carlsen, he could have easily flown his private plane to Khanty, to play a few rounds there and return in time for the start of the opening leg of the 2017 Grand Chess Tour in Paris on June 21st… Just kidding. By the way, Nepo isn't scheduled to play in Paris, so he's free to play for Russia, while no such luck for the American stars, Wesley, Fabiano and Hikaru.

The other two matches today ended unexpectedly. First I would like to present you with a complete account of the India-Poland match.

Vidit Santosh Gujrathi vs Radoslaw Wojtaszek

Vidit showed some 'serious positional chops' according to GM Yermolinsky. He is also now just a couple of points away from joining the 2700 club.

In the next game,the talented Indian player, Baskaran Adhiban, who had been the surprise of Tata Steel earlier this year, finds himself in trouble aganst the 19-year-old Jan-Krzystof Duda, and unable to wait passively, precipitates his loss by trying to 'take action'.

Jan-Krzysztof Duda vs Adhiban B.

Murali Karthikeyan vs Kasper Piorun

After a two-year layover, Parimarjan Negi returns to play to defend India's colors. It was an uneven effort, though he drew in the end against the Polish player Mateusz Bartel.

Parimarjan Negi vs Mateusz Bartel

In the absence of Magnus Carlsen or Jon Hammer, Norway's top board is 18-year-old GM Tari Aryan

A great match it was, and it saw #5 taking down #4, but a bigger surprise was #9 Turkey holding # 3 Ukraine to draws on all four boards. I was a bit surprised by the speed with which the much higher rated Ukrainian players wrapped up their games. Board 2: Korobov-Yilmaz in 23 moves; Board 3: Can-Moiseenko in 18 moves; and a bit more effort on Board 4: Kravtsiv-Dastan in 31 moves. I guess, they were looking for their leader, Ruslan Ponomariov, to bail them out, and for a long time it seemed he would do just that.

Ruslan Ponomariov vs Dragan Solak

Well, oops. Losing a match point like this may prove to be costly in a round-robin event. Here there's no benefit of possibly getting an easier draw for the next round, since all of your competition will get to play Turkey later in the tournament.

In the Women's event, the clash of the titans took place in round one: Russia vs China

A big match was Alexandra Kosteniuk's 104-move victory over Ju Wenjun

The Women's event the draw for round one was quite opposite, as some of the best teams faced one another. Russia took down China 3-1, while India and Georgia drew their match. I expect a very tight race between the teams I mentioned, plus Ukraine that edged the US team by a minimal margin.

More fun tomorrow, stay tuned.

Team results Open section:

For board wise break down, click here

Team results Women section:

For board wise break down, click here

Links

• Official tournament site
• All Open games in PGN or Replay them directly here (many analyzed)
• All Women games in PGN or Replay them directly here (many analyzed)

You can use ChessBase 14 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.