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Home » Chess News » Events » 39th Chess Olympiad Khanty-Mansiysk 2010 » 14 Teams remain on 100%

Russia's 2nd team has moved into first place as Ukraine drew with Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina drew with Poland. China now are in 2nd, Armenia 3rd, Spain 4th and the USA 5th. Early days 14 teams have a perfect 3 match wins from 3 record.

There were 32 teams going into the third round with 2 wins from 2. I was somewhat surprised to find that the intuitive Match points followed by Board points scoring system doesn't seem to be how this Olympiad will be fought. Board points alone first of all was how it was decided in the past and this had the merit of being simple to understand and report. Now the regulations don't make things at all clear at first sight. I think this is a mistake.

14. The position of teams that finish with the same number of match points shall be determined by application of the following tie-breaking procedures in sequence, proceeding from (a) to (b) to (c) to the extent required: the sum of Sonneborn-Berger points, which are calculated as follows:

match points of each opponent, excluding the opponent who scored the lowest number of match points, multiplied by the number of game points achieved against this opponent;

by the number of the game points scored;

by the sum of the match points of all the teams opponents, excluding the lowest one.

For tie-break purposes a bye or an unplayed match - if the opponent team does not appear on time - are counted as a drawn match against the team itself.

The top pairing was Ukraine against Croatia. They drew 2-2 as Zahar Efimenko won with black for Ukraine and Mladen Palac for Croatia.

2-2 was also the score between Bosnia & Herzegovina and Poland. Ivan Sokolov scored his third win in a row by beating the highly rated Radoslaw Wojtaszek.

Amongst the pre-tournament favourites Russia 2 won 3.5-0.5 against Peru and they now lead the event. China now move into 2nd and Armenia 3rd.

The USA beat Chile 3-1 with wins from Gata Kamsky against Ivan Morovich Fernandez and Robert Hess on bottom board.

Spain led by Alexei Shirov on top board beat Latvia 4-0. Russia 3 with Alexander Motylev on top board beat Cuba 2.5-1.5 with awin from Rublevsky against Fidel Corrales Jemenez.

The Russian first team won the professional way with two wins with white two draws with black to beat Italy 3-1.

David Navara beat Peter Leko but wins for Ferenc Berkes and Zoltan Almasi gave them the win.

Levon Aronian made his first appearance and he started with a win with black in an easy win for Armenia over Turkey.

Veselin Topalov won today against Mauricio Arias Santana after his rather fortunate draw in Round 2.

England needed to make a move after their loss to Bosnia in Round 2 and they won 3-1 with wins for Michael Adams, Nigel Short and Gawain Jones against South Africa. Luke McShane went slightly bonkers and sacrificed a lot of material for nada in losing to Donovan Van den Heever. They're now 29th.

Scotland continued their impressive progress with a 2-2 draw against the Philippines. Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant is one of a number of women playing in the Men's or Open Olympiad (I'm using Men because the word Open is almost invisible in headers. Other women include Judit Pogar, Viktorija Cmilyte and Zhu Chen were others who caught my eye) and she rescued them with a win against Darwin Laylo.

Available Round 3 games are in the Livegames PGN downloads (not just the ones I broadcast live). I will include them in the main download when a better version become available.

The Ukraine lead the women's Olympiad but 11 teams have started with three wins.

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