39th Olympiad Khanty-Mansiysk 2010 (the chess)

[Simon Ansell]

Although the final position of the women's team looks great, we do have to take this with a little perspective as they only played 3 teams with a higher seeding, the lost against Iceland was very disappointing

Total respect for Kanwal and Sarah for beating their weaker opponents with relative ease, but we really do need to see more victories against the 2200+ players, which both of the above actually did once this time.

I really do think now we should be expecting 2200+ performances in the future as an expecting performance

I was going to make the same point. Leonard's post is a bit strange, can't we aim higher than this? The Women's team performance is surely nothing special. Sarah and Kanwal did indeed do well to score as highly as they did and both more than justified their places in the team, but let's not get carried away.

[Michael Jones]

However, it's possible that Grandelius' opponent may be forced to try to win in order to save the match (which would give Grandelius chances). Having said that, Stupak is the one with any genuine chances in that endgame. White's got very bad pawns and his king poorly placed.

Stupak has won, although since he was 37 behind Jones at the start of the round that may not be enough to overtake him. My guess for the likely order on board 5 now would be Bartel, Feller, Babula, Jones, Stupak, Grandelius, but apart from Bartel almost certainly having won it, that is only really a guess. As for the other board prizes:

1 - Ivanchuk was 54 ahead of Aronian before this round, so I'm not sure whether the fact that he drew (vs Gelfand) and Aronian won (vs Vachier-Lagrave) will be enough for Aronian to overtake him.

2 - Sutovsky had it more or less sewn up with a 150+ point lead before the start of the round which he'd probably have kept even if he lost and Grischuk won; as it was they both drew.

3 - Teterev had a big lead and retained it by not playing.

4 - Karjakin had almost as big a lead, and retained it since he and Efimenko both drew.

For the record:

1 - Aronian's win wasn't quite enough, as Ivanchuk beat him to the board prize by two points. Nepo finished third; Sokolov was the only sub-2700 player to make the top 10 (4th - RP 2798, actual rating 2641). Adams remained where he was at the start of the last round, 20th.

2 - As expected, Sutovsky was comfortably ahead; Almasi and Wang Hao both overtook Grischuk to finish second and third.

3 - Teterev miles ahead, followed by Eljanov, Rublevsky and Polgar.

4 - Karjakin well ahead of Efimenko and Giri.

5 - Surprisingly, Bartel's draw cost him enough points to allow Feller to take the prize without playing the last round. Since Gawain is rated higher than Babula, the draw was enough for Babula to move up to third, with Stupak fourth, Gawain fifth and Grandelius dropping to seventh.

[David Brock]

Just out of interest, is there a particular reason why Susan Lalic hasn't Olympiads recently?

You have obviously not read her interview in last months chess magazine. As she finds it very hard to leave her children for so long but would be interested in playing shorter tournaments etc.

By the way it is a very good article.

[LozCooper]

I gather Maria's coaching is personal and nothing to do with the ECF (though has the ECF ever done anything worthwhile around adult coaching is another question)

Personally unless there is an improvement in funding I wouldn't send a women's team to the Olympiad until they can all players have consistently had performances over 2200

Is it a good use of funding going all that way just to play 1800 and 1900 players?

The cost of sending a women's team is relatively small and money well spent in my opinion. I could certainly suggest many better ways of saving ECF money then stopping the one time in the year where women players get some help.

I am sure that Sarah's excellent debut will send a clear message to other younger girls that if they show they are good enough they will get an opportunity to play for England. Why you would want to put a stop to that and deny players like her that opportunity is beyond me.

I would love to have money for coaching for younger or older players, male or female, but that is a distant dream in the current financial climate.

[Eoin Devane]

Sam Collins unfortunately lost today against GM Zhong Zhang, 2582: http://www.icu.ie/games/display.php?id=29829

According to the ICU, Sam in fact needed only a draw today for the norm, rather than the win that we thought he needed. So he ended up just half a point short with an overall TPR of 2549, which is still an excellent performance and bodes very well for the future. Hopefully he'll make that final norm in the near future.

[Alan Walton]

The point I was trying to make, rather than spending £x to send a women's team to play a sub-standard field (which was the case this year), we could use that £x to develop women's chess so in the near future we would have a better pool of players to perform at the top level in all fields of chess, then we can send teams to perform at the top level

Apart from Anya Corke (debatable though from Hong Kong) when did we last have a young female player getting over 2200 (i think it would be Heather Richards and Ruth Sheldon), just by playing in the Olympiad hasn't really helped this situation, so maybe we should have some proper long term coaching structure instead, or try and take our strongest team possible (have at least two of the four from Harriet, Jovanka, Anya, Susan)

Remember the current financial problems have only happened over the last 18 months, these problems have stemmed over many years

[Maxim Devereaux]

Sam Collins unfortunately lost today against GM Zhong Zhang, 2582: http://www.icu.ie/games/display.php?id=29829

According to the ICU, Sam in fact needed only a draw today for the norm, rather than the win that we thought he needed. So he ended up just half a point short with an overall TPR of 2549, which is still an excellent performance and bodes very well for the future. Hopefully he'll make that final norm in the near future.

Yes, they were correct. I had only done the numbers based on all the games played, not with the option of discarding his round 2 win over PNG. This would have raised the average rating of his opponents to be *just* high enough for a draw to be sufficient, but sadly he was unable to get it. Still, I think it's clearly only a matter of time, and of course he still needs another 50 or so rating points, but more performances like this one and he will soon be there.

[Michael Jones]

Congratulations to all the players, and many thanks to Loz for his work - and for putting up with all the comments on here!

[Alex Holowczak]

or try and take our strongest team possible (have at least two of the four from Harriet, Jovanka, Anya, Susan)

Don't you think Loz's Plan A was to field those players? The players themselves probably counted themselves out of selection.

[Keith Arkell]

Just out of interest, is there a particular reason why Susan Lalic hasn't Olympiads recently?

You have obviously not read her interview in last months chess magazine. As she finds it very hard to leave her children for so long but would be interested in playing shorter tournaments etc.

By the way it is a very good article.

Particularly the bit about the 8 years with me when she went from rated 1940 to 2420 ...there it is...in the bit about her chess developement...o must be mistaken,can't find it...lol No but really c'mon Susan's got 3 kids,a full time job and I doubt the fees are that great to play in the women's team,so having already been there and done that and worn the t-shirt I can't see any reason why she would want to leave her home,and freeze in Siberia just to wind the clock back and do it all again.

[Jonathan Rogers]

[quote="Alan Walton"]

...

Apart from Anya Corke (debatable though from Hong Kong) when did we last have a young female player getting over 2200 (i think it would be Heather Richards and Ruth Sheldon) ....

The answer is Heather. She is the only woman whom we did not know about when the 4NCL started in 1993 to have since passed the 2200 mark.

[LozCooper]

The point I was trying to make, rather than spending £x to send a women's team to play a sub-standard field (which was the case this year), we could use that £x to develop women's chess so in the near future we would have a better pool of players to perform at the top level in all fields of chess, then we can send teams to perform at the top level

Apart from Anya Corke (debatable though from Hong Kong) when did we last have a young female player getting over 2200 (i think it would be Heather Richards and Ruth Sheldon), just by playing in the Olympiad hasn't really helped this situation, so maybe we should have some proper long term coaching structure instead, or try and take our strongest team possible (have at least two of the four from Harriet, Jovanka, Anya, Susan)

Remember the current financial problems have only happened over the last 18 months, these problems have stemmed over many years

I think dropping the women's team would be a good way of increasing the number of women who give up playing. We obviously didn't know in advance how the pairings would work out but even if I had I will always support the women's team and as long as I'm International Director we will send a women's team to both the Olympiad and European Team.

We did take the strongest available team and the reasons for the various absences were all due to the location/dates not due to finance.

There is more going on in women's chess than the Olympiad albeit that is the event that gets most publicity.

[Gareth Harley-Yeo]

Cindy Henriette of the Seychelles made it onto the scoreboard today, and not with a walk-over either!

http://ugra-chess.com/liveboard?gameid=1000110574

And despite dropping a piece on move 5!

I'm considering making her a facebook fanpage!

[Maria Yurenok]

Is some sort of coaching framework in place for this? I seem to remember reading that Maria Yurenok (who did very well in the 4NCL this past season) is aiming to make the Olympiad team, and that she's taking coaching in order to achieve her goal (but I don't remember whether she's paying for it out of her own pocket or if it's funded).

I certainly pay for coaching myself. It would be great if ECF paid for it but I doubt it would happen in my lifetime. 4NCL was one of my lesser achievements this year, while WIM norm with over 2300 performance was the best and I can certainly attribute it to the coaching I received from GM Chris Ward - great coach who I really recommend! It only took me 4 months to get WIM norm from the start of coaching. I certainly had to carefully consider the costs but looking back the mistake that I made was not to get coaching sooner. Trying to learn chess yourself improves results (I've done it before when I got WFM title), but based on my experience coaching brings results faster and a sure way to improve women's chess in this country - if only there were ECF funds for at least one full-time women's coach then women's chess would rocket up in this country!