European Team Championship Underway
Just in case a 16-move draw didn't satisfy your desire to see some big-time chess, there's a major event underway in Warsaw: the European Team Chess Championship. Unlike the European Club Cup, the players here represent their own countries (or at least the countries whose federations they play for); that makes it interesting not only as a competition featuring individuals but from a team perspective too.
Some very strong teams are participating: Russia (Grischuk, Svidler, Andreikin, Tomashevsky etc.), Armenia (Aronian, Movsesian, Akopian), France (Bacrot, Vachier-Lagrave), Ukraine (Areshchenko and Moiseenko, but no Ivanchuk or Ponomariov), England (Adams, McShane, Short), Azerbaijan (Mamedyarov, Radjabov), Hungary (Almasi, Polgar), the Netherlands (Giri), Czech Republic (Navara, Laznicka), Germany (Naiditsch), Spain (Vallejo Pons), Italy (Caruana) and Greece (everyone, of course). Other strong individuals include Jobava of Georgia, (Sergey) Zhigalko of Belarus and Topalov of Bulgaria.
After two rounds five teams have perfect 2-0 match scores: Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Greece (of course), Turkey and France. Amazingly, the Turks defeated the Russians in round 2, 2.5-1.5, despite fielding four players rated from 2565 to 2625 against a team whose lowest board was Dmitry Andreikin, World Championship Candidate. Three games were drawn and Dragan Solak beat Alexander Grischuk (#4 in the world prior to the game). It's just unbelievable how often the Russians have failed to come through as the top seed in the team competitions over the past decade or so. "Of course"-ing aside, Greece's 3-1 victory over the English in round 2 was also very surprising.
Round 2 also saw an interesting individual clash between two candidates, Mamedyarov and Topalov. Topalov won with Black in 32 moves, but the final position as given on the live games page is only slightly better for Black. Does anyone know if the DGT board simply got messed up by pieces flying around, or if Mamedyarov ran out of time? Another possibility is some sort of touch-move error that led to resignation without bothering to execute the move in full.
Seven rounds remain, so if Carlsen and Anand don't manage to entertain us over the next few days we've got an alternative.