Chess - The Scotsman 30/08/2012

By JOHN HENDERSON
Published on 30/08/2012 00:00

In 1924’s Paris Olympics the French chess federation hosted an informal international team tournament to coincide with the Olympic Games. Then, as now, chess in the Olympics was frowned upon, so, after the formation in 1926 of FIDE, the governing body of world chess created their “Olympiad”, with the first official one taking place in London in 1927.

Olympiads have now become biennial behemoths, with the 40th edition underway in Istanbul, Turkey. There were no opening-round upsets on Tuesday, with all the usual suspects of top seeds and medal contenders – Russia, defending champions Ukraine and Armenia – all winning, though not without some individual mishaps along the way, such as Russia’s Evgeny Tomashevsky being held by William Puntier of the Dominican Republic, and Armenia’s Sergei Movsesian being beaten by Oswaldo Zambrana of Bolivia.

Scotland, seeded 65th in the open section, got off to a good start by beating the US Virgin Islands 3.5-0.5. In the women’s event though, Scotland, seeded 86th, were whitewashed 4-0 by France.

John Shaw of Kilmarnock built his GM status on becoming an exemplary rook and pawn endgame player by continually re-reading Rook Endings by Levenfish and Smyslov, and his superb technique showed through with his win against the US Virgin Islands in today’s game.

J Shaw - W Van Rensselaer

40th Istanbul Olympiad, (1.2)

Caro-Kann Defence

1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 Nd2 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Nf6 5 Nxf6+ gxf6 6 Nf3 Bg4 7 Be2 Qc7 8 h3 Bh5 9 0–0 Nd7 10 Be3 e6 11 Nh4 Bg6 12 c4 Bd6 13 Qd2 0–0–0 14 b4 e5 15 c5 Be7 16 Nxg6 hxg6 17 Rab1 exd4 18 Bxd4 Nxc5 19 Qe3 Rhe8 20 Bxc5 Bxc5 21 Bg4+ f5 22 Bxf5+ gxf5 23 Qxc5 Re2 24 Qxf5+ Qd7 25 Qxd7+ Rxd7 26 a4 Rdd2 27 h4 Ra2 28 a5 Re4 29 g3 Ra4 30 Kg2! Raxb4 31 Rxb4 Rxb4 32 h5 Re4 33 Kf3 Re6 34 Rh1 Rh6 35 Kf4 f6 36 g4 Kd7 37 Kf5 Ke7 38 f4 Rh8 39 h6 Kf7 40 g5 fxg5 41 fxg5 Rf8 42 g6+ Kg8+ 43 Kg5 Rd8 44 Re1 Rd5+ 45 Kf6 Rd6+ 46 Re6 Rd8 47 h7+ Kh8 48 Kg5 1–0