Zee News, India
June 2 2006

Indian men need big improvement in Chess Olympiad

Turin, June 02: In a make or break situation, the Indian men need to
pull themselves up going in to the final leg of the 37th Chess
Olympiad here.

After a bad start and a recovery, victories for the team led by
Viswanathan Anand have become elusive and what they need now is a
major turnaround in performance if they have to remain in with a
chance of finishing in the medal bracket in the biggest chess event
in the world.

As things stand, the second seeded Indians are currently on joint
ninth spot on 24.5 points and only a few big victories in the last
three rounds after the second rest day can help them recover lost
ground.

The Indian hopes and aspirations will be on display once more when
they take on strong-looking sixth seed Israel.

While Viswanathan Anand will start as a clear favourite against
Israeli top player Boris Gelfand on the top board, the remaining
three Indians will have to be at their best to bring the team back in
contention for honours.

Armenia has proved beyond doubt what a spirited team effort can do.
The major contributor for the team has been Gabriel Sargissian who
has scored a whopping 8.5 points out of his 10 games so far and aided
by some gutsy performances by other members, the Armenians seem to be
running away with the gold this time. They already have 29 points in
their bag and even a 50 percent score from here should be enough for
the team to win the event.

Though China is currently in second place, the Armenians will be more
worried about a rejuvenated Russian team that downed defending
champions Ukraine in the previous round.

However, a comforting feeling for Armenia is that they are currently
2.5 points ahead of the Russians and have already played them. The
Russians are definitely going to come firing on all cylinders in the
rounds to come and will hope to make things difficult for Armenia.

According to Anand, the last few rounds in the chess olympiad are
most important as far as the final standings are concerned as a good
finish can propel the team way up.

But herein, it appears that ‘a good finish’ is not enough, what the
Indians need is a windfall. And only then there is a chance.

Contrary to what was earlier believed, the Indian eves have come up
with far better results thus far and are currently in joint fifth
spot.

Though the race for the title is now only between leaders Ukraine and
top seed Russia, the Indians can still hope to figure amongst the
medals if everything goes right in the last few rounds.

In the 11th round, they take on Romania and an Indian victory can be
expected with grandmaster Koneru Humpy on the first board. However,
the problem with the team is that they have played neither Russia nor
Ukraine and if they are able to win by a good margin against Romania,
chances are they will meet one of these teams in the next round which
will be a tough test for them.

While both men and women players exuded confidence ahead of the last
few rounds, it remains to be seen how far the great Indian dream of
winning a medal in the Chess Olympiad goes.

Meanwhile, today is a big day in the chess olympiad with the fide
elections set to take place. The incumbents led by Kirsan
Illumzhinov, who is also the President of Kalmykian republic, seems
to have an upper hand as yet but, as in any other election, the
pre-poll predictions can go wrong. Later today, 155 countries will
vote for the next fide office.

Illumzhinov’s “chess fidelity” team is up against “right move” team
headed by Dutch businessman Bessel Kok.