News Update

Before we lunge into Rupert Jones’ latest missive I’d like to remind visitors and Fantasy Chess Olympiad managers that we hope to be able to post final scores and provisional prize winners later on today.

We can confirm that the “Best Team Name” prize has gone to “Isolated Puns” who won the poll with 34% of the vote. Congratulations!

PGN’s Craig Skehan with Botswana’s board 1, Providence Oatlhotswe. Craig looks surprisingly down beat about breaking his Olympic duck! Cheer up old stick. You won!

Craig Skehan: Australian journalist, specialist on South East Asia and Pacific island politics, six times chess Olympian. His debut for Papua New Guinea was in Dubai 1986. He even played against Botswana, losing to Zero Madike. PNG won the match. I was playing for Botswana.

His record in that and subsequent Olympiads was:

Dubai 1986: played  8/ won 0/ drawn 3/ lost 5
Bled   2002: 7/0/2/5
Calvia 2004: 14/0/2/12
Turin 2006: 13/0 /2/11
Dresden 2008:  10/0 /1/9
Istanbul 2012: 8/0/0/8

Yesterday, thanks to my bad loss in round 10, we got a decent last round pairing; a 3-1 and it would have been horrid. Sao Tome & Principe it was. From early on all hell seemed to be happening on Craig’s board. Concentration on my part was hard. Craig’s pieces were hitting f7 and then he took on f7. Mate seemed imminent. But Craig being Craig missed the best continuation and his opponent kept on fighting emerging with two pieces for the rook and two pawns. Craig played an illegal move and luckily it wasn’t costly. More importantly he didn’t resign as he had in round 10. Craig offered a draw for by now we were winning easily on boards 1 and 2. His opponent refused. My game was dull by comparison, I had an edge and was behind on time. I had a good hunch that Nd3 was winning but held back. My opponent was repeating moves and offered a draw. I told him to reach move 30. I could tell from Dejan’s body language that he wanted me to draw so I repeated moves to 30 and shook hands. I was trying hard not look at Craig’s position. It was very distracting.

Stuart Fancy won on top board and Helmut Marko who had been three pawns up was now returning them all. I went off on walkabout especially to catch glimpses of the Botswana match. Their arbiter kept chasing me away. Grandmaster’s were now wandering over to Craig’s match, including Jon Speelman and some of Dejan’s Bulgarian friends. Hylton Bennet was spending more time watching Craig than his own New Zealand team. Ian Rogers was also sighted and tension built. Shaun whispered that it was getting very hard to lose, Craig had past a and h pawns. Would his opponent resign or play to mate? That would be interesting. He went a6 then h7, bishop takes and the rook forks king and bishop. Then a7 – a8 = queen. I can see the players are shaking hands. Has Craig blundered, offered a draw in the heat of the moment? I rush over and see the thumbs up. Unbelievable! The twenty seven  year wait is over. Craig has won at the 61st attempt. And before he gave all his pawns back Helmut had regained his grip and we had won 3.5-0.5 to go to a respectable 8 points.

It’s 3am and the durable Sudanese team are still playing blitz having played a total of 434 moves in their match against Botswana earlier in the day!

It was a sensational last round. Russia lost out to Armenia on tie break, with Ukraine 3rd place after a fine performance from Chuky and his mates against China. The Chinese did not look very happy at the closing ceremony. Nick Croad was heard to mutter something about ‘work camps’. England also finished well with good wins from Nigel and David Howell and Gawain had another Black. Readers should never be in doubt about the fighting spirit as blood is spilt for every last half point.

This returns me to Botswana against Sudan. The match went on and on. We were told that the last bus back to the hotels was going at 16.30 and Botswana still had all 4 boards in play. Ignatious Njobvu then drew after 92 moves and that was stalemate. On and on the other three boards went. All the other matches had finished After 101 moves board 2 was drawn (king and rook each). Still the match went on. On board 3 Khetho had fought back from a piece down. He somehow got it back and was a pawn for the good. And the match went on. 111 moves and his Sudanese opponent resigned.

Board 1 was king and queen plus two pawns and dead drawn. Sudan knew that a 2-2 won the section E category prize. So he played on. Everyone else just wanted to pack everything away and the TAP team wanted the results on the internet and to sort out all the prizewinners and still the game went on. Providence offered a draw and then made a 50 moves claim but after he had played the move and pressed the clock. It was rejected. Then the Sudanese player blundered and resigned after 140 moves with the match finished at 17.30. Botswana had won 3-1 but that seems a little irrelevant beside a combined total of 434 moves! The Olympaid was over; finally!

Team Armenia the morning after the night before!

And there is a happy ending for the weary warriors of the Sudan as they won silver behind Nigeria and got their moment up on stage. Category D went to Puerto Rico won ahead of Algeria and Tunisia with Botswana 5th. Botswana were happy, 50% for the first time. And Craig returned to the hotel with some nice red wine and a small celebration before we waved goodbye to a happy Dejan who was  feeling on top of the world after achieving the impossible. He went off to catch a bus back to Sophia. And on returning from the closing ceremony at 02.30 who was still playing blitz, none other then the Sudanese. In fact they kept playing till 5am! (See above left.)

Post Script

I have moved hotels as I don’t travel till Tuesday. So back to Mr Press’ sofa. And in the foyer is a large group of Armenians. Their flight was originally to be at about midnight last night. However, on hearing victory was Armenia’s in came the Presidential request; “don’t worry lads, no rush with the prize giving, the jet is on its way.” So they are all leaving just now and before they walk out they gather together for a group photo (above right), trophy in hand. I grab my chance.