2016 Olympiad - Baku

[Carl Hibbard]

My hard earned cash is on the USA this time.

[Steven DuCharme]

Scotland 4 USA 0 is my prediction

[Carl Hibbard]

Scotland 4 USA 0 is my prediction

I was thinking more to win the whole thing.

[NickFaulks]

The reason why Mexico didn't show up yesterday is at least cleared up. Apparently they thought the first round was today!

[IanCalvert]

Scotland 4 USA 0

Is it true that Presidential hopeful Donald will be on all four boards of the USA team?

[Reg Clucas]

Looks like it's the England women's turn to get the dodgy transmission today!

[Leonard Barden]

It's early days after an hour's play. but at the moment this is looking like a tough fight against resilient opponents.

Adams level

Howell just made what the computer thinks a slightly dodgy offer of his f2 pawn

McShane's opponent thinking a while over whether to play the strong c5-c6

Short has sacrificed a pawn for enough compensation but not yet more.

[Leonard Barden]

Another half hour on, and things are looking better.

Adams has a small edge

Howell's opponent chickened out of taking the f2 pawn and David is now slightly better.

McShane's opponent did play c5-c6 but the machine has now downgraded its strength.

Short is making progress, +0.88

[Leonard Barden]

Looks like it's the England women's turn to get the dodgy transmission today!

All four games now frozen for nearly an hour and a half.

[Leonard Barden]

Looks like the transmission freeze may have struck our men's match, too. No moves for nearly half an hour on at least three boards.

Later-working again now.

[Mike Truran]

Gosh. The ECF and the 4NCL don't need a 13.3m Euro budget to manage that.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Shame we can't follow the women's team; they may be underdogs but not by a wide margin and the match would have been worth watching.

Men are up and running again and we are clearly better with white and completely ok with Black. Another 4-0 is quite conceivable.

Short's pawn sac in the English is well known and has won some favour after Kasparov v A Sokolov Belfort 1988, with which the great man himself still seems very proud. Kasparov tells the story that Botvinnik showed up at the event half-way through this game and asked Kasparov which line of the Sicilian it had been!

[Leonard Barden]

Meanwhile, Scotland are putting up a strong fight against the United States, with McNab clearly better against the in-form Shankland, Greet with an edge against Caruana, and Shaw v Nakamura and Gourlay v Robson slightly worse.

[Angus French]

Howell just made what the computer thinks a slightly dodgy offer of his f2 pawn.

I wondered about that but the Stockfish running on my desktop says that taking on f2 would be bad: 10... Bxf2+ 11 Ke2 (covering e3) bxc6 (11... Bxc6 meets the same response) 12 b4 and Bf2 is lost.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Worth keeping an eye on USA v Scotland, where USA are struggling very much on board three and slightly so on board four. Maybe the USA will need their top three players throughout? (So is resting today).

I see that Leonard just posted to similar effect. But Scotland are Black on board four, and so stockfish slightly prefers Gourlay on that board.

Mind you, I very much doubt that Stockfish's slight preference for Greet's position will worry Caruana - it is still a difficult position with a lot of play.