39th Olympiad Khanty-Mansiysk 2010 (the chess)

[Jonathan Rogers]

The fear is that our hopes with the men's team might rest too heavily on the bottom two boards.

But* let's have an opinion from a former Olympiad player ...?

* sees "mhebden" as having logged on

[Jonathan Rogers]

Sarah is completely winning. Any news on board one?

[Ben Purton]

Theres one miracle, at least Karsten Muller came in use one time in his life

[Mark Howitt]

Thought this would be a tough game but bad result anyway.

[Jonathan Rogers]

not a single miracle in Ukraine v Scotland either.

[benedgell]

Looks like the Vietnamese are going to pull off an upset against Azerbaijan.

[Alex Holowczak]

Bulgaria lost to Croatia too.

[Maxim Devereaux]

Looks like the Vietnamese are going to pull off an upset against Azerbaijan.

They have. After the relay had us believing Le Quang Liem had lost his queen yesterday and gone down, Jonathan Rogers can start thinking that his prediction of a top 10 finish for Vietnam is suddenly looking very prescient.

Open draw is up for tomorrow. England have White on odds vs. South Africa

And now the Women's too - England White on odds vs. Venezuela

[Matthew Turner]

Very disappointing from the England men today. Except for Short very early on, they never looked like winning a game to me. I did think Sokolov played very well, so Bosnia certainly deserve a fair bit of credit. I hope Gawain will play tomorrow, perhaps they can engine a shot at a board prize for him?
The Women did us proud, nice win from Sarah and I thought Kanwal and Jovanka might be doing well at various points.

[LozCooper]

Round 3 board pairings:

England (ENG) Rtg - 81 South Africa (RSA) Rtg 0 : 0
30.1 GM Adams Michael 2728 - IM Solomon Kenny 2394
30.2 GM Short Nigel D 2690 - IM Kobese Watu 2370
30.3 GM McShane Luke J 2657 - FM Steel Henry Robert 2300
30.4 GM Jones Gawain C B 2576 - CM Van den Heever Donovan 2285

39 England (ENG) Rtg - 54 Venezuela (VEN) Rtg 0 : 0
19.1 IM Houska Jovanka 2426 - IM Sanchez Castillo Sarai 2278
19.2 WIM Lauterbach Ingrid 2169 - WIM Moreno Garcia Elizabeth Paola 2024
19.3 WFM Grigoryan Meri 2099 - Gutierrez Leonela 2062
19.4 WFM Hegarty Sarah N 2084 - WIM Ubaldo Suarez Maria Gisela 2054

[LozCooper]

The fear is that our hopes with the men's team might rest too heavily on the bottom two boards.

But* let's have an opinion from a former Olympiad player ...?

* sees "mhebden" as having logged on

I can't claim to be a past/present or future Olympiad player but let's not write the obituaries for our top two players just yet. I still can't believe we only managed 1.5 from the 4 games yesterday given the positions the team had but team morale is good and we have plenty of rounds to recover.

[Steve Rooney]

Strange that some respected UK newspapers appear to have reported a story that Yemen sacked its team for playing Israel when it's shown as a default on official site. A Yemen outlet has just issued a correction to the story but the Independent ran the original item on it website at least (and read out in Radio 4 Today headlines) and the Telegraph appears on a google news search running the same although the page cannot be found, presumably withdrawn.

[David Brock]

Good luck to our guys today!

We really out grade our opponents today so lets hope for at least 3.5 points

[Alex Holowczak]

Strange that some respected UK newspapers appear to have reported a story that Yemen sacked its team for playing Israel when it's shown as a default on official site. A Yemen outlet has just issued a correction to the story but the Independent ran the original item on it website at least (and read out in Radio 4 Today headlines) and the Telegraph appears on a google news search running the same although the page cannot be found, presumably withdrawn.

The page for the Independent is here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 87043.html

Apparently, they were supposed to withdraw rather than simply default the match.

[Jonathan Rogers]

The fear is that our hopes with the men's team might rest too heavily on the bottom two boards.

But* let's have an opinion from a former Olympiad player ...?

* sees "mhebden" as having logged on

I can't claim to be a past/present or future Olympiad player but let's not write the obituaries for our top two players just yet. I still can't believe we only managed 1.5 from the 4 games yesterday given the positions the team had but team morale is good and we have plenty of rounds to recover.

Sure, it's early days. And if one assumes, as I have done, that our aim is for a top ten place (not a medal) then an early loss does not have to dampen things too much. Sometimes one can make a virtue out of these things.

My comment yesterday was meant not as an obituary, which would be absurd at this stage, but rather as a reflection (and a response to another poster) on what went wrong yesterday - the point being that we had drifted on board two as well as board one. I had some sympathy for Adams yesterday - he cannot have been too keen about playing a second black after having struggled in his first, and in the event Sokolov simply played very well and might have beaten almost anyone. If his morale is still good though, he can surely recover.