England Olympiad pairings

[LawrenceCooper]

Round 1:

Bo. 88 Andorra Rtg - 11 England Rtg 0 : 0
10.1 GM De La Riva Aguado, Oscar 2540 - GM Jones, Gawain 2653
10.2 FM Simonet, Marc 2291 - GM Short, Nigel 2698
10.3 FM Garcia, Raul 2193 - GM Howell, David 2635
10.4 Jose Queralto, Daniel 2133 - GM Pert, Nicholas 2555

Bo. 44 England Rtg - 107 Suriname Rtg 0 : 0
42.1 WGM Corke, Anya 2254 - Dos Ramos, Rosangela 1707
42.2 WFM Hegarty, Sarah 2120 - WCM Naipal, Ekaterina 1756
42.3 WFM Chevannes, Sabrina 2090 - WCM Ooft, Tesora 1716
42.4 WFM Bhatia, Kanwal 2103 - Dos Ramos, Sabrina 0

[Jonathan Rogers]

Thanks Loz.

Are we expecting 7/8 or even 7.5/8 from our boys and girls today?

Wales are playing India in the first round for the second time in succession! I remember the cries of delight two years ago when Wales went 1-0 up in two hours - before that and several other games and scores, were subsequently corrected.

I guess I will watch live gmes here today

http://www.chessolympiadistanbul.com/en/live-games.html

though no doubt I am being silly and should use Chessbomb or something else ...

[Alex Holowczak]

I guess I will watch live gmes here today

http://www.chessolympiadistanbul.com/en/live-games.html

though no doubt I am being silly and should use Chessbomb or something else ...

At the risk of being accused of optimism, the website looks very good.

They've managed to get the Swiss Manager software to appear directly within their own website. In the past, tournaments have just embedded it as a frame (that was never quite wide enough to show all the information), or just provided a link to the relevant Chess-results.com page.

There also seems to be a captain's login (that I haven't seen before), and everything seems easy to find.

So it looks like, to me, they've put some effort into their website. So maybe they'll be able to cope with the traffic for the live games.

[Andrew Camp]

Playchess.com's coverage two years ago was brilliant and it's easy to get up to 12 boards on the screen at once.

[Paolo Casaschi]

At the risk of being accused of optimism, the website looks very good.

It really looks very good. Only the live games part remains to be uncovered, hopefully that one will be at the same level as the rest of the site.

There also seems to be a captain's login (that I haven't seen before), and everything seems easy to find.

I read somewhere that captains will be able to enter the results electronically, probably that login allows them to do that.

One more wish: a live webcam/audio from the sessions of the FIDE congress... that would be fun to watch...

[Roger de Coverly]

One more wish: a live webcam/audio from the sessions of the FIDE congress... that would be fun to watch...

Alex and Lara describe their experiences on the Chess Scotland site. (Alex is an arbiter and Lara the captain for the SCO teams).

http://www.chessscotland.com/internatio ... report.htm

One point that comes to mind is the almost complete exclusion of spectators from anywhere near the playing area. It is perhaps to be expected, given the Feller case two years ago. Organisers like Agon, trying to popularise chess as a spectator activity are going to have an uphill struggle if this sort of exclusion becomes the norm. But then perhaps not, as the Simpsons event is closed, other than to invitees.

Entry to the playing area is very limited only players, arbiters and team captains. Once a player has finished their game they are expected to leave the playing area. Spectators have tiered seats at one end of the arena only. Only the top games will therefore be visible without the use of binoculars! There is an area outside the main arena where spectators can go to see the ‘demo boards'.

[James Coleman]

Shame Dave Norwood hasn't turned out for Andorra - that would have been a laugh.

[Alex Holowczak]

The organisers are presumably in the process of defaulting themselves; the games should have started 18 minutes ago...

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Time difference? Mostly off-topic, but the pics of Kramnik and Klitschko here are hilarious. If you've ever seen Kramnik in person, you'll know how tall he is. Which gives some idea of how massive Klitschko is (it is Vitali):

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8434

[James Coleman]

The organisers are presumably in the process of defaulting themselves; the games should have started 18 minutes ago...

Presumably they're using some sort of transmission delay for anti-cheating...

[Alex Holowczak]

The organisers are presumably in the process of defaulting themselves; the games should have started 18 minutes ago...

Presumably they're using some sort of transmission delay for anti-cheating...

The English-speaking commentator was saying that they "should have already started" at about 1:15, so I think they were just late.

In other news, my optimism about the live boards doesn't appear so misguided. I have the full England games up and working, albeit with a few games a bit out of sequence.

[Alex Holowczak]

In other news, my optimism about the live boards doesn't appear so misguided. I have the full England games up and working, albeit with a few games a bit out of sequence.

... but now it does. Can't get any live games working on the official website.

[Andrew Camp]

Wales are playing India in the first round for the second time in succession! I remember the cries of delight two years ago when Wales went 1-0 up in two hours - before that and several other games and scores, were subsequently corrected.

Richard Dinely seems to have made a decent start against Abhijeet Gupta. Early days though.

[Michael Yeo]

Richard Dinely seems to have made a decent start against Abhijeet Gupta. Early days though.

Except that Dineley would seem to have spent 40 minutes reaching a position that Gupta has had at least twice before....

[Roger de Coverly]

... but now it does. Can't get any live games working on the official website.

The 2000 Olympiad also had ambitious plans to cover most or all of the games using the DGT sensory boards. I seem to recall one early round where the coverage got so corrupted that they paused play and asked everyone to rekey their games from the start.

http://www.olimpbase.org/2000/2000in.html#trivia

So as a comparison, apart from the introduction of wireless boards, have the hardware and software of live game transmission moved on from 2000? Perhaps a key benchmark is whether the coverage works "first time", or whether there's a panic rebuild when the system buckles, as it appears to have done in the Olympiad first round, at the first sign of lots of viewers.