The 2012 Chess Olympiad under way

The 40th Chess Olympiad is scheduled to take 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 one

Since in the first round top seeded teams were paired against those from the second half of the rankings most of the matches were clean walk-overs, and most of the world's best players sat out of the round.

The highest ranked player to actually play a game was world number four Teimour Radjabov (above), who scored a win for Azerbaijan against IM Michael Wiedenkeller of Luxembourgon (for a 4-0 victory for his team). Other 4-0 wins were scored by Ukraine over Iraq, USA against Jordan, France against Zimbabwe, India against Wales, Cuba over Japan, Poland over Monaco, Greece over Barbados and Italy over Guatemala.

Armenia scored 3-1 against Bolivia, with the South American country's first and only grandmaster, Oswaldo Zambrana, 2471, scoring a stunning victory over GM Sergei Movsesian, who is 228 points higher than him on the Elo scale.

In the pairing Russia vs the Dominican Republic (above with Alexander Gischuk, 2763, vs IM Munoz Santana, Jose Lisandro, 2428, on board one) FM William Puntier (board three, in the yellow shirt) held GM Evgeny Tomashevsky to a draw in one of the longest games of the day.

Round one: Team-Pairings - Open

Results of all 79 pairings here

Tthe Women's Section saw more top seeded teams scoring clean sweeps over their lesser rivals: China, Russia, Georgia, USA, India and Poland chalked up against Bandgladesh, Bolivia, Guatemala, New Zealand, FYROM and Dominican Republic, respectively.

The Russian Women's team, with WGM Pogonina Natalija, IM Gunina Valentina,
GM Kosteniuk Alexandra and GM Kosintseva Tatiana

The Chinese women's team, with WGM Ding Yixin, 2424, WGM Huang Qian, 2449;
WGM Ju Wenjun, 2528, and GM Zhao Xue, 2549.

WIM Lougain Dahdal of Jordan defeated IM Lilit Galojan of Armenia to reduce the losing margin to 1-3. WFM Gabriela Maria Avelar Bonilla from El Salvador snatched a draw from the much higher rated IM Anna Ushenina from Ukraine.

Round one: Team-Pairings - Women

Results of all 63 pairings here

The Japanese team, with its best player, Shinya Kojima (with the hat), who has been playing many tournaments this year in Hungary – "First Saturday" in Budapest and Kecskemet. He did not achieve a desire IM norm but gained a lot of experience. In Japan it is much more difficult to encounter experienced players with international tittles. For the first time on the team is 11-year-old Karen Hoshino (blue dress on the left). In the first round of the Olympiad the men's team faced Cuba, with players 400-500 points stronger, and were defeated 0-4, but after some stubborn fights.

The Turkish teams with the Minister of Youth and Sports Suat Kilic, TCF and FIDE dignitaries, trainers

Photos Anastasiya Karlovich, Frederic Friedel in Istanbul

GM Daniel King: Istanbul Olympiad 2012 Round 1 play of the day

Andrew Martin: Istanbul Olympiad 2012 Game of the Day Rd 1

Remaining schedule of the Olympiad

There is live commentary of the most interesting games on Playchess.com,
beginning around half an hour after the games have started.

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 PGN 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.