9th round
Bulgaria 2 - 2 England
In the final round, this match finished 2-2 after 4 quick draws which is understandable from both sides' point of view. It ensured Bulgaria won the tournament and in the end England got 6th place just edging out Russia on tie-break.
Even if England won 4-0, which would have been a tall order against a team with 2 IM's and a FM, they still wouldn't have won a medal due to other teams' results. Losing this match would have meant England finishing 10th or 11th which would have been a shame seeing how well they played throughout where they actually played against the top 5 teams at the end and only played against 2 teams below their 10th seeding. They won 3 matches, drew 5 and only lost 1 match.
So Bulgaria are the World Deaf Team Champions with Poland 2nd and Germany 3rd.
Here are the 9th round results in full
http://chess-results.com/tnr135006.aspx ... =30&wi=821
and the final ranking table
http://chess-results.com/tnr135006.aspx ... =30&wi=821
Many congratulations goes to all the players for contributing towards the best performance by an England Deaf team in history. We came 7th in 2006 but that was against fewer teams and didn't face as many higher seeded teams like this time round.
The stand out performances came from Lewis Martin on board 1 with 5½/9, a 2241 performance and gaining 29 ELO points, and Chris Kreuzer on board 4 with 6½/8 or 7½/9 if you include the default win, a 2252 ELO performance and gaining 37 ELO points. He narrowly missed out on the board 4 prize to IM Orev of Bulgaria. Well done to them both and hope they can continue with this excellent form in future.
All the other team members also played an important part especially with the vital wins to ensure we won the matches against Switzerland, Israel and Italy. So well done too to Neil Dunlop, Ilan Dwek, Phillip Gardner and Barry David who was also captain so had extra responsibility to shoulder.
To put it all in perspective, as I mentioned earlier, we edged out Russia on tie-break to take 6th place. The Russian team had a 2 week training camp before coming to Croatia. We had nothing remotely resembling the resources they had on display where our team members prepared on their own with no coach.
The Women's World Deaf Team Championship was won by Ukraine with Russia 2nd and Kazakhstan 3rd. More details can be found here;
http://chess-results.com/tnr135040.aspx ... =30&wi=821
In the individual Open tournament, Olaf Hoyer (Germany) won convincingly ahead of Petrenko (Russia) and Petrauskas (Lithuania). More details can be found here;
http://chess-results.com/tnr135043.aspx ... =30&wi=821
Finally, there was the 3rd World Deaf Blitz Championship held one evening in the middle of the tournament which was won by GM Gruenfeld with IM Collutiis 2nd and FM Zivic 3rd. Chris Kreuzer was the only England player taking part where he scored 4/10. More details can be found here;
http://chess-results.com/tnr138707.aspx ... =30&wi=821