English Chess Forum

Indeed, and this is worth bearing in mind when preparing beforehand. You don't want an opening catastrophe! Once the match is in play, things change and what matters then is more the positions on the other boards - so a white player may become satisfied with a draw, or a black player may need to become more ambitious, if the position allows it.

I don't really think the Slovaks had a grand plan and executed it to perfection; as always in chess one must resist the thought that "the winner had it under control all along". I think it was more of a case of the winner enjoying their fair share of luck in the process. If they were trying to draw most of their games v England and Germany and hoping for one lucky result, then it looked like backfiring against Germany where they were being pressed to the wall in the one game in play, and they had to rely on the German player missing countless wins over a period of 15 moves or more.

Maybe that brings up the question of board order, as we have seen with the Azeris in team competitions playing their best player on a lower board

Or simply the question of which players in the team you might want to have the same colour in a match, and therefore "pairing up" boards 1 and 3, and boards 2 and 4 - would Nigel & Keith, say, sharing the same colour (and thus John and Jon ditto) have produced better or worse results?

Or, does none of this matter, and simply it is down to having fit and in form players?

A report on this event (by Jim Plaskett) has appeared on the Chessbase website, featuring a game by Nunn and several photos of some of the England players:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/3rd-world- ... ip-dresden