Batumi Olympiad

[LawrenceCooper]

Has anyone noted Scotland playing Netherlands? Though it has been a whitewash, and so not on a par with the Irish effort.

Andrew Greet did on Facebook, prior to the match.

[LawrenceCooper]

And Ireland have got their second half-point against Russia. I'll leave Tim to describe the action!

An excellent result for David Fitzsimons

[JustinHorton]

Bo. 25 England (ENG) Rtg - 69 Scotland (SCO) Rtg

15.1 IM Houska, Jovanka 2402 - GM Arakhamia-Grant, Ketevan 2345
15.2 IM Ciuksyte, Dagne 2308 - Roy, Ali 1923
15.3 WFM Head, Louise 2161 - Giulian, Rosemary A 1924
15.4 WIM Maroroa, Sue 2112 - Espinosa Cancino, Monica 1655

3-1 to England, the top game going to Ketevan.

[Tim Harding]

And Ireland have got their second half-point against Russia. I'll leave Tim to describe the action!

Actually I was mostly watching the Baburin game and then Robson's queen ending. David Fitzsimons seems to have played a pretty steady game. He got slightly worse, as might be expected against a 2700+ GM, but seems to have managed the necessary simplification and technical ending fine.

Hopefully that is the first step towards a GM norm for him. It was disappointing to see Alex Lopez not giving Nepo' more of a fight but he can just put it behind him now and can probably look forward to a game with White on board 1 tomorrow. I don't have inside knowledge but Baburin is probably pretty tired so would be the obvious player to rest unless we get a really tough pairing.

[Tim Harding]

Germany drawing with Georgia III the standout result in the women's event, as far as I can see, with Ukraine, Spain and Hungary all scraping their wins by the narrowest margin against, respectively, Turkmenistan, Bangladesh and the country currently known as FYROM.

Yes, the young players of Georgia-3 did well in both tournaments, but surely Uzbekistan beating Russia, as you already, tops that? It's the first actual match loss by a favoured team in either tournament.

[JustinHorton]

Yes, sorry, should have had an "other than that" in there.

Talking of Uzbekistan, don't they have a very strong young player (Sindarov, seen here against Gawain) who's not in the Open side?

[Leonard Barden]

Round 3 Brazil v England

[Jonathan Rogers]

The sort of team we would in the past probably beat with White on one but would make rather heavy weather of playing with Black on one. Still a better pairing than many of the plausible alternatives, I expect.

[Richard Bates]

And England versus Azerbaijan. A decent test.

[Nick Burrows]

So that's the teams ranked #3 then #2 on consecutive days. Must be Germany next..

[Richard Bates]

So that's the teams ranked #3 then #2 on consecutive days. Must be Germany next..

To what is this referring?

[Nick Burrows]

So that's the teams ranked #3 then #2 on consecutive days. Must be Germany next..

To what is this referring?

FIFA world rankings

[Richard Bates]

So that's the teams ranked #3 then #2 on consecutive days. Must be Germany next..

To what is this referring?

FIFA world rankings

Of course! Although it might have been worth checking the current rankings first...

[Nick Burrows]

Oh yeah - Germany no.12 - WTF?!

So France it is

[Chris Rice]

Round 2 report by Peter Doggers. Nice story of Indian chess journalist Niklesh Jain proposing to his Colombian girlfriend, WGM Angela Franco, before round two. Danny King analyses Vitiugov (RUS) vs O'Donnell (IRL).