India had a disappointing outing at the 43rd Chess Olympiad with the men\u2019s team finishing a poor sixth and the women ending their campaign at a lowly eighth spot here Friday. Seeded fifth at the start of the event, the Indian men played out a 2-2 draw against Poland in the 11th round, while the women recovered some lost ground to beat Mongolia 3-1 after facing some anxious moments<\/p>\n
Both the Indian men and women\u2019s teams finished their campaign garnering 16 match points each. It was a day of drama for the medal contenders but India\u2019s hopes had waned once China and United States settled for a 2-2 draw on the top board and Russian men beat France 2.5-1.5 to reach an identical 18 points.<\/p>\n
The tie-break depended on the Sonenborn-Berger, the chess equivalent of Duckworth-Lewis though a bit less complicated. The tiebreak is based on each tied team\u2019s performance against their respective 11 rivals and in the end China pipped United States to take the gold in the men\u2019s section while the Russians ended with the bronze medal.<\/p>\n
It was a double treat for China as they came back from jaws of defeat in the women\u2019s section against Russia and the 2-2 draw was enough to win the gold. Tying with Chinese women on 18 points, Ukrainian ladies won the silver here while the bronze went to Georgia 1.<\/p>\n
Having put together the best ever teams in both men and women section, this was a missed opportunity for both the Indian teams. Nevertheless, there were some lessons to take back home too as they lost matches in the second half something that can prove costly in a massive event that has global participation.<\/p>\n
For records, the Polish team that played with top eight seeded teams finished fourth and England came from behind to take the fifth place ahead of Indian men. Viswanathan Anand settled for a draw with Duda Jan-Krzysztof in just 25 moves out of a Petroff when the Indian ace could not claim any real advantage with white pieces.<\/p>\n
P Harikrishna then signed peace with Radoslav Wojtazsek on the second board while Vidit Gurjrathi could make no headway and settled for a draw against Piorun Kacper. B Adhiban tried real hard, sacrificing a piece in the endgame against Jacek Tomczak but in the end had to split points.<\/p>\n
Personally, except Gujrathi, all the Indian men performed above their ratings which means a marginal gain for everyone in world rankings. Anand scored 5.5 from nine games, Harikrishna scored 7\/10, Adhiban 5.5\/8 and Sasikiran ended with 6\/8. Gujrathi made five points from his eight outings.<\/p>\n
The Indian women team were under serious pressure at some point against Mongolia but pulled things back thanks to Padmini Rout and Tania Sachdev. On the top board, D Harika played out a draw against Batkhuyag Munguntuul and Tania Sachdev defeated Nomin-Erdene Davaadembere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India had a disappointing outing at the 43rd Chess Olympiad with the men\u2019s team finishing a poor sixth and the women ending their campaign at a lowly eighth spot here Friday. Seeded fifth at the start of the event, the Indian men played out a 2-2 draw against Poland in the 11th round, while the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43786,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43787,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43785\/revisions\/43787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}