Before we start we bring you a summary of round one by our main commentator Daniel King, directly from the Olympiad in Tromsø. The video was recorded in the midnight sun – well, the midnight dusk, since we are now past the solstice and the period of the year when the sun doesn't set at all.
The reason is that Tromsø lies withing the Arctic Circle, one of the major circles of latitude, running 66.56° north of the Equator. It marks the southern extremity of the "polar day", which is when the sun is visible for 24 hours (usually referred to as the "midnight sun") at least once per year, and polar night, when the sun does not appear above the horizon for 24 hours. The midnight sun can be seen in summer for many days, weeks or months, depending on how far north of the arctic circle a place is located.
The Arctic Circle [Graphic by Swinburne University]
The places where people can see the midnight sun are Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and some extremities of Russia. At Finland's northernmost point, the sun does not set for 73 days during summer.
Now to the two-minute summary by our main commentator GM Daniel King:
Olympiad Tromsø 2014 - Round 1 Report. Daniel will be providing these short summaries after each round, and they will be added to our main report shortly after midnight local time – which is nicely placed in the evening in the US and early morning of the next day in the Far East. On the next morning you can expect to see Daniel's Play of the Day embedded in the report. Here it is for round one:
During the games we have live broadcast on Playchess by expert commentators, with post-game interviews and analysis directly from the venue. Here is what the live audio commentary during the games looks like.
As the players emerge from the main hall we invite them to our Playchess studio to conduct interviews with them. Two notable interviews on Saturday were with former World Championship Challenger Peter Leko and with Indian star Parimarjan Negi.
Top Hungarian GM Peter Leko being interviews by André Schulz of the ChessBase team
Parimarjan Negi, rated 2645, on board one for India
Pari, who is studying in California, analyses his game with Daniel King
Danny analyses with the US team trainer Wesley So, who also studies in the US
Interviewing GM Harika Dronavalli, 2521, board one of the Indian women's team
You can have it in Spanish as well: above Leontxo Garcia interviews Anna Madnadze...
... who is a Georgian WGM living in Barcelona and fluent in Spanish
Our photographer and Internet expert Pascal
Simon (left) and GM Viktor Bologan wait
for the head of the ChessBase technical department to set up the Playchess
broadcast
Where and how to watch: log into Playchess.com and watch all the games in progress. Analyse with the built-in engine, chat with other spectators. And if you are a premium member you can watch all the lectures, interviews and analysis free of charge. And it isn't at all expensive. Prices for a full year's membership are given in the table below.
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