Armenia, Georgia Win Olympiad Gold
After 11 exciting rounds of chess, Armenia successfully defended their Olympiad championship in the Open section, finishing one point ahead of Israel. The Armenians were led by Vladimir Akopian and Gabriel Sargissian, who were the top individual performers on boards 2 and 3 respectively. The United States won bronze after a stunning 3.5-0.5 defeat of Ukraine, whom they also beat on tiebreaks for the final medal. Interestingly, the three medal winners were the 9, 8 and 10th seeded teams - the favorites did not fare well, although (as already mentioned) Armenia were the defending champions.
In the Women's division, Georgia finished just ahead of Ukraine on tiebreaks to earn the gold. The United States again claimed the bronze medal, this time ahead of Russia and Poland on tiebreaks. The best performance by far in this section belonged to Georgia's GM Maia Chiburdanidze, who scored 7.5/9 on board 1 for the champions.
While some of the new rules (forfeits for players who don't arrive on time, no agreed draws before move 30) might get a second look, one change I hope will stay is the switch to match points determining the standings. Personally, it never made much sense for a team tournament to be determined by board points for me; it essentially made the individual match results meaningless, as a 2.5-1.5 split was only a very minor improvement over a 2-2 draw, and there was no match strategy involved for teammates. Allowing match results to determine the winners brings the Olympiad in line with most team chess events, and adds tension to games which otherwise might have no influence on the standings.
Comments
In terms of the Olympiad organisation it was a very good Olympiad (probably the best organised of the 5 that I’ve played in). Where it wasn’t good were the changes to the Olympiad format itself.
The switch to match points, while on the surface attractive, caused a significant number of problems with the pairings. Indeed, at the FIDE Technical Commision, both Almog Burstein and Christian Krause blamed to match point system for the strange match ups (eg USA losing to Azerbaijan and playing Hong Kong in the next round). Retaining game points would have resulted in more ‘normal’ pairings.
Other changes that were looked upon unfavorably were: 0 minute forfeit time, accelerated pairings (look at the round 3 pairings to see how that failed to work), and the shorter event (11 is too short). In fact the only rule changes that ‘worked’ were the additional time after move 40 for the players (which was mainly used for a trip to the toilet), and the no agreed draws in under 30 move. And even that worked, not because it encouraged ‘fighting chess’ but because it made it much harder for teams to agree to 2-2 draws in the latter stages of the event.
Thanks for the first-hand account! Even as an observer, the shorter tournament format didn’t appear to work as well, and a few of the rule changes were at best neutral, and in some cases harmful.
In terms of pairings, I wonder how effective it would be to use match points for standings only, but still utilize game points for pairing purposes. You make a good point about the strange pairings that occurred at several points because match points were used for pairings.