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U.S. Takes Bronze in Chess Olympiad

By jrosenhouse on June 17, 2006.

With all the other things going on, I never got around to acknowledging the fine performance by the United States team at the recently completed chess olympiad in Turin, Italy. Armenia took the gold medal, while China took silver. That Russia finished out of the medals is one of the major news stories of the event. More than 150 teams participated in the event. Well done!

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That was well done indeed.

To me, a highlight was our own Pascal Charbonneau's sound defeat of Anand after being spotted 300 ratings points. This (Anand only won a single game, against a guy 500 points lower - although to be fair this was also the only game he lost) match against Canada was symptomatic of the very poor Indian performance there, finishing 30th despite ranking 2nd overall in ratings. Their lowest rated guy was rated higher than our higest rated guy, but down they went.

Charbonneau's been a strong player for years, so it's nice to see him claim such a high-powered scalp. Even an off-form Anand is hard to beat.

I was also impressed by Nakamura's win over Grischuk. Girschuk was totally winning until a big blunder at the end. But it's still Nakamura's first win over a 2700+ GM, as far as I know.

Nakamura's play is impressive, rather reminiscent of a young Kamsky going toe to toe with Karpov....before his father got all psycho and everything and ruined the party.