38th Chess Olympiad Dresden 2008 The Olympiad took place from November 12th to 25th, 2008, in the Congress Hall in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. 156 teams from 152 nations participated, with most of the top players present. Statistics and stories Who was the top rating winner in Dresden, which player added the largest number of points to his or her current FIDE ratings? The answer is Aa Citra Dewi of Indonesia, rated 1802, who scored 6.0/11 against strong opposition and gained 69.8 points. She is followed by Cegmed Munhchuluun of Mongolia, 1969, who gained 67.8, and WIM Joanna Majdan of Poland, 2284, who gained 66.9. The biggest male winner was Mohamed Waqar of Pakistan, rated 2207, who gained 63.5 rating points. We would also like to mention that Atousa Pourkashiyan gained the title of WGM, an achievement that was celebrated in the Tehran Times.

But let us come to the big boys (and girls) and see how they fared. The following lists represent a selection of players, mainly chosen on the basis of their strength or because they are well-known names.

Veselin Topalov, who had a rating performance of 2821, added just five points to his 2791 FIDE rating. Boris Gelfand's 2833 performance earned him 14.3 points (as you can see in the table above), and Peter Leko's prize-winning 2834 performance on board one will add 10.8 points to his 2747 FIDE rating.

The (unofficial) live top list of provisional world chess rankings, which covers all players with a rating above 2700 in the FIDE system, compiled the following list on November 25th at 19:05, immediately after the last round of the Olympiad:

The web master of Live Top List, Hans Arild Runde, is livid at the drastic change of the World Championship cycle by FIDE ("despite binding contracts with the Grand Prix participants"). He has decided, as a consequence, to temporarily discontinue his service on a day to day basis. Instead he is asking his visitors to write to FIDE – relevant links are given – "to tell them that it's quite unacceptable to make huge changes to an on-going qualification cycle, and that this decision needs to be reversed as soon as possible. However, if you consider the chance fairly low that FIDE would ever do anything like that, you could instead ask the Treasurer to simply make €50,000 payable to the Webmaster of chess.liverating.org - you know, to remove future uncertainty and improve our finances and so on."

In round 11 Peng Zhaoqin of Holland got a tremendous advantage against Tatiana Konsintseva of Russia.

Peng Zhaoqin (2455) - Kosintseva,T (2513) [E15]
38th Olympiad w Dresden GER (11), 25.11.2008
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.c4 b6 4.g3 Ba6 5.b3 Bb4+ 6.Bd2 Be7 7.Bg2 c6 8.0-0 d5 9.Qc2 Nbd7 10.Rd1 0-0 11.Bf4 Rc8 12.Nc3 h6 13.e4 dxc4 14.Nd2 c5 15.d5 e5 16.Be3 Ng4 17.Nxc4 b5 18.Bh3 h5 19.d6 Bf6 20.f3 Nxe3 21.Nxe3 Rc6 22.Ncd5 Nb6 23.Nb4 cxb4 24.Qxc6 Bg5 25.Rd3 h4 26.Rad1 hxg3 27.hxg3 Bxe3+ 28.Rxe3 Qg5 29.Kf2 Qh6 30.Rh1 Bc8 31.Bg2 Qg6 32.Qc5 Qf6 33.Qxb4 Bd7 34.Rc1 a5 35.Qd2 a4 36.Rc7 axb3 37.axb3 Ra8 38.Rb7 Ra6 39.Rc3 Be6 40.Rc6 Nc4 41.bxc4 Rxc6

42.Rb8+? Here Deep Fritz 11, which has been giving White more than +4 since the time control, wants 42.cxb5 Rc8 43.b6 Rd8 44.Rc7 Bc8 45.Qa2 with a +4.50 evaluation. 42...Rc8 43.Rxc8+ Bxc8 44.d7 Qb6+ 45.Ke2 Bxd7 46.Qxd7 bxc4

Now Peng is stuck with an endgame which, try as she might, she is unable to win. 47.Qc8+ Kh7 48.Qxc4 Qb2+ 49.Kf1 Qb1+ 50.Kf2 Qb6+ 51.Ke1 Qb1+ 52.Kd2 Qb2+ 53.Qc2 Qd4+ 54.Ke2 Qg1 55.Bf1 Qxg3 56.Qc8 Qh2+ 57.Kd1 Qf2 58.Qh3+ Kg8 59.Qc8+ Kh7 60.Qh3+ Kg8 61.Qg2 Qe3 62.Qe2 Qb3+ 63.Ke1 g6 64.Kf2 Kg7 65.Qb5 Qc3 66.Qd5 Qc7 67.Bc4 Qb6+ 68.Kg2 Qf6 69.Kf2 Qb6+ 70.Ke2 Qf6 71.Bb3 Qf4 72.Qd7 Qf6 73.Bc4 Qf4 74.Qe7 Kg8 75.Qd6 Kg7 76.Qe7 Kg8 77.Qa7 Kg7 78.Qe3 Qh2+ 79.Kd3 Qh1 80.Kc2 f6 81.Qa7+ Kh6 82.Qe3+ Kg7 83.Kb2 Qd1 84.Bb3 Qd6 85.Kc3 Qa3 86.Kc2 Qd6 87.Qd3 Qc5+ 88.Bc4 Kh6 89.Kd1 Qg1+ 90.Kd2 Qf2+ 91.Kc3 Qc5 92.Kd2 Qf2+ 93.Kd1 Qg1+ 94.Ke2 Qg2+ 95.Ke1 Qg3+ 96.Kd1 draw.

So why are we showing you this game? Well, as Chess Today pointed out, this game was decisive for the Gold Medal going to the Georgian team. Had Peng won this game the match Netherlands-Russia would have been drawn 2-2 (instead of 2½:1½ for the Russians). Ukraine had beaten the Netherlands 3½-½ in an earlier round and would have thus had a better tiebreak than Georgia, who drew with Russia 2-2.

The most unusual result of the Olympiad was that of a player named Yohannes Simbolon, who is unrated and without a birth date on his FIDE card (he is around fifty). Her drew his tenth game on board three for Indonesia in 91 moves and in the process spoiled a unique record. In all nine previous games our hero had won every single white game and lost every single black one.

Yohannes, seeded 734th in the Olympiad, had even beaten a grandmaster, Nikola Mitkov, in a white game, to achieve a rating performance of 2366. Memo to self: must find out more about this player.

In case you missed it: our Ukrainian friend and associate Olena Boytsun pointed out that there was a serious error in the English translation by Russia Today of the original Russian language story regarding the stolen diamond in the Nona Gaprindashvili International Trophy (see our report). Apparently it was not the Georgians or "Gruzin" who removed the diamond from the statue at Kiev airport, but baggage handlers or "gruzchik".

The Ukrainian news portal Today displayed the missing diamond in the trophy.

The Armenian Chess Olympiad champions received a tumultuous welcome on their return, in the plane of their President Serzh Sargsian, in the capital Yerevan. You can watch it on this YouTube video:

The Georgian women's team returned to Tblisi to a similarly warm welcome. President Mikheil Saakashvili met with the Olympic Champions and awarded cash bonuses and Orders of Honors to the players, who won Gold for the fourth time. As the broadcasting company Rustavi 2 reports: the president thanked the chess players for "restoring the glory of the Georgian chess school and proving that Georgian chess is not only alive but is in a good form, as well." There is a video on the page as well.

Meanwhile the players from Azerbaijan were clearly shattered by their 0-4 loss against arch rivals Armenia. The two contries have hostile relations over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, and this can sometimes be felt at chess events. Panorama.am reports:

Links

• Official Olympiad web site
• All ChessBase reports on the Olympiad
• All games in zipped PGN: Open section – Women's section