Daily report by GM Alexander Baburin from Turkey
Day Ten, 6th November 2000. Finally
our team broke our losing series, as we beat Qatar 21/2-11/2. The score could be
event better, but I lost the game where I had a big advantage. At some point I
could take a draw by a perpetual check, but I decided to play on. My judgement
was correct, but the execution was poor - one bad move and I found myself losing
the game, which I had played very well. Well, losing is a part of the
profession... I will annotate that game tomorrow.
Our ladies won again - their 4th
victory in a row! This is probably the longest winning streak our team ever had.
They beat the team from South Africa 2-1.
The day was tough for leaders in men's Olympiad
as Germany lost to Ukraine - 11/2-21/2. Russia lost with the same score to
Bulgaria, which becomes a bad tradition for the Russians, who also lost to
Bulgarian in Elista (1998), Yerevan (1996) and Moscow (1994)! After 9 rounds
Armenia and Germany are leading on 25 points, Ukraine is third with 241/2 points
and then come Bulgaria and Russia on 24 points. Tomorrow the key matches are
Armenia-Germany, Ukraine-Bulgaria and Russia-Romania.
In women's Olympiad the standings are: 1. China
- 21 points; 2. Georgia - 201/2 points; 3-4 Russia and Netherlands - 181/2 points;
5. Ukraine - 18 points. Today Ukraine plays against China, Georgia against
Romania and Russia against Netherlands.
With 5 rounds remaining the competition gets
tougher. By the way, I should mention the official site of the Olympiad - www.istanbulchessolympiad.com
There you can find game scores, match results, etc.
In the evening most on the Irish team went for a
drink. Both local beer and wine are not bad. There are lots of people at the
Taksim Square (the area around which most teams stay) and it's possible to find
an open place at any time of the night. Actually, there are almost as many
people around the Taksim Square at 2 in the morning as during the day - Istanbul
keeps surprising us! Not everything is pleasant though - the city gets rather
dirty in the end of a day. The streets are cleaned every night, but I wonder
whether installing more bins could be a better solution. There is also a fare
amount of hustling and begging in the streets.
More new from Istanbul will follow - come back
tomorrow!
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