@ An Afghan: Please see Peter Doggers explanation of China's absence in his first article on this tournament.
http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/world-team-championship-has-started

There is (or at least was) a "Chris rule" in French team competitions, where a lower board may be at most 100 points stronger than a higher board. Within this limit, a team may shuffle players around freely. One team (I think from Bordeaux, but not the club I played for myself) had all players within 100 points of each other, giving them a distinct advantage: they could always prepare for their opponents, but players from the other team had little advance idea whom they would face.

Azerbaijan broke this rule (non-existing in the given context) whenever Guseinov (2614) played ahead of Mamedyarov (2741) - not in the other three matches because Gashimov, Radjabov and Mamedyarov have virtually identical ratings. Russia putting Morozevich on a lower board never broke this rule, because the other players were also rated above 2700.

It's a myth that beating 100-200 points lower-rated opponents is "easy" - this has nothing to do with the computer age, but simply with statistical foundations of the ELO system. A rating difference of 200 points yields an expected score of 76%, nothing less and nothing more! Two practical examples:

1) Mamedyarov's expected score against an average rating of 2575 is 3.53/5, Gashimov's expected score against 2655 is 3.17/5. A certain difference, but much less than the difference in their actual scores.

2) Discarding his loss against Efimenko (2680) - BTW a "typical Moro loss" with an incorrect piece sacrifice - in the other eight games at the 2008 Olympiad Morozevich played as expected, scoring 6/8 (+4=4) against an average rating of 2584. This is 75%, he should have scored "an impossible 76%" ... .

don't you technically mean "America" is back on shared first not Russia? Russia is still half a game point back.

And poor Moro... what terrible shape he is in =(

Mamedyarov has a lost position after 13 moves against a 2471 rated opponent today (if Bxe5 next)...

And what about Gelfand's 24th? :-)

Not sure what you mean in Mamedyarov's game - 14.Be5:? Bf3: or even 14.-Qe5: 15.Ne5: Be2: . Or was there something wrong with the live transmission (again)?

And not sure what Gelfand meant with 24.dc7: - did he miscount the number of pieces captured and remaining on the board over the next couple of moves? What was wrong with accepting Nakamura's piece sacrifice (24.Kg2:) ?

China is not there because they dropped out at the last minute & India replaced them.

Why is Mamedyarov playing on such a low board ? His ranking may go up because he gets 100% against weaker opposition.

I think that there should be a rule that players play in Elo order.

"This Russian team is very close to prove that they can better without Kramnik, Svilder and that they don’t need Karjakin at all!"

It's the 13th team event Grischuk plays for Russia, but it's the first time he's on board 1. Maybe a good idea, I've read somewhere that he usually has been the player in the team to be most interested in the games of the others. USA will face Armenia and Azerbaijan in the last rounds, so I think Russia will win the gold rather easily, even if Armenia today is a tough match.

I checked the game between Gashimov and Grischuk. What a game!

Going by the engines Gashimov was totally lost well before the 25th move, but without engines that may have been slightly more difficult to say... Grischuk as usual blitzed out the best moves in time trouble, and at the moment he is live rating #6, a position that maybe corresponds more with his playing strength than it did for Gashimov when he was 6th in October-December. Grischuk did after all win Linares and the Russian Superfinal last year, and has been in very good form the last months.

Grischuk had no choice but blitzing, right after Gashimov's novelty (or was it a hint from teammate Mamedov?) he had spent around 45 minutes on 15.-Rh7. As far as I remember - but the live transmission started to become unreliable - Gashimov then started thinking himself - some similarities to another Najdorf Sicilian in Moll-Spoelman!? ,:) .

If Gashimov was indeed lost by move 25, Peter Doggers' "?!" on moves 21 and 23 is justified. Was this own analysis or assisted by engines? Nothing at all wrong with the latter!

On Gashimov vs. Grischuk: While Gashimov's ELO gain in 2009 was from the Gibraltar Open, team events and the slightly weaker tournament in Poikovsky, the year before he had successes (almost) comparable to Linares and Russian Superfinal in the FIDE Grand Prix events. The current event doesn't go as well for him, he was actually also overtaken by his teammate Mamedyarov who should now be in the top10.
BTW, as the live rating list wasn't yet updated this year I (and presumably pb) got this info from the ELO statistics on the tournament homepage. I just asked on Dailydirt whether Hans-Arild Runde - there posting regularly as frogbert - is doing OK ... .

Hey guys, what is up with the live ratings? I have not seen a update since 30 december, it's a pity because i loved checking them....

"the ELO statistics on the tournament homepage"

Yes, that is maybe the best section of the whole home page. Going over Gashimov-Grischuk with an engine, what struck me was that after move 23 Grischuk stayed several pawns up in the engine evaluations also if he had played second or third alternatives at most moves (at some occasions he did miss the first choice as well). Maybe the evals aren't totally reliable, but something was wrong with Gashimov's line if he really was so lost so early with white, regardless of how exciting it did look.

Grischuk or Aronian Match against Rybka 3 or 4 !

During the opening (looking at the clock times), it seemed that both Morozevich and Grischuk were caught in the opponents' preparation - but only one game had the "corresponding" result. So Grischuk's victory is even more valuable as it was obtained against the odds, against the prep!?

What may Gashimov have missed?
15.-Rh7!? I didn't even consider this move, but I am neither a super-GM nor an expert on sharp Sicilian lines ... . But it doesn't refute Gashimov's novelty - Peter Doggers' line on move 21 looks both forced and OK for white. Maybe it's also OK for black, who seems to get certain (sufficient?) compensation for the exchange he loses.
Is 15.-Rh7 suggested by engines?

23.-Bb4+ ? Hard to believe - but this may be the turning point in the game. After Doggers' 23.Rf7 I see only nice lines for white, e.g. 23.-a5 24.Bb4 anyway, 23.-Kd8 24.Re7:! Ke7: 25.Bb4+ Kf6 26.g5+! Ng5: 27.Qg6+ Ke5 28.Qg7:+ Kf4 29.Qf6+ Ke3 30.Bd2 mate
If I am correct - of course there is no guarantee - there was nothing wrong with Gashimov's line!?

29.-Ka4!! when the alternative 29.-Ba3: may still be messy, even if engines (correctly) conclude that black still has a decisive advantage.

world championship should be strongst field passible i don,t see china why is that?

pleas can some one explain to me

"Not sure what you mean in Mamedyarov’s game – 14.Be5:? Bf3: or even 14.-Qe5: 15.Ne5: Be2"

Both players missed (if the transmission was correct) was that 14. Bxe5 Bxf3 15. Bxf6 Bxe2 16. Rd8# and 14. Bxe5 Qxe5 15. Rd8+ Kxd8 16. Qd3+ followed by picking up the queen wins immediately for white.

If the transmission was correct I'm surprised Ezat Mohamed missed it, at least Mamedyarov played his move quickly and maybe just blundered, but his opponent spent over 20 minutes on his 14th. But maybe it was just a case of incorrect transmission.

Ah OK, the type of combination an engine sees immediately, but which GMs can easily miss - even if it is not too difficult (in hindsight!?).

Maybe Mohamed had a sneaking suspicion, but
- either he saw one of the lines, but not both of them,
- or he didn't trust his calculations, somehow thinking a 2700+ player doesn't make that kind of mistake?

Regarding possible cheating in team competitions, this was a case where a non-verbal sign from the team captain (indicating "go for it!") could have made a difference!?

Well, whatever happened Mamedyarov won again and I think he has +16 -1 =8 in his 25 latest games, not bad.

thanks mamedyarovfan i gat it

Gashimov's third loss in a row today, against Ahmed Adly (2591)

Why? Every team can set up their own board order. All other teams could put their best men on board 4 too. In that case Mamedyarov would have to play against top guns.

It's a pre-tournament strategy. They have to give their own board order before the tournament, without knowing the board order of other teams. So the other teams could surprise them too and make their strategy look less good.

If they would have to seed them by rating, board orders would be known months in advance.

Chris's point "I think that there should be a rule that players play in Elo order" is interesting and makes a lot of sense. For
example, it might be demoralizing for a lowly-rated player to have to face a super-GM, although some relatively low-rated
players might revel at the opportunity to play a super-GM ... and the chance to gain a big scalp ;-)

Regarding GM Mamedyarov, it was pointed out by Peter Doggers at http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/world-teams-india-beats-azerbaijan-rus...
that the Azeri board order is "repeating a successful strategy from last year’s European Team Championship". At that tournament, Shakhriyar actually requested to be placed on a board lower than his rating would allocate. The strategy may not be working well in the World Team Championship, for while Shakhriyar has 5/5, and GM Radjabov hasn't lost any game against the high-rated opponents he faces, unfortunately GM Gashimov is experiencing a bad streak on board 1.

Shakhriyar's rating has gone up to 2754 and rank 8 in Hans Arild Runde's live chess ratings site http://chess.liverating.org . (I think he will be ranked 7 when the list is updated today, due to GM Gelfand's loss to GM Nakamura and Shakhriyar's win against GM Ezat yesterday.) While Shakhriyar did beat an off-form GM Morozevich in this tournament (the latter made a bit of a recovery by winning yesterday), it is the case that as implied by Chris, much of Shakhriyar's rating increase in this tournament is due to hammering lower-rated opposition, even though one does not gain a lot of points by beating players who are ranked way below you.

There is of course a huge rating price to pay if one loses against a much lower-rated player. Indeed pb astutely points out above a potential disaster for Shakhriyar in his game against GM Ezat yesterday .

I see that a lot of 2700 players are having difficulty beating 2600 and even players around 2500, so perhaps use of computers as training aids is making the practical gap between GMs small. Of course an amateur like me is not qualified to comment authoritatively on such matters, and it is a source of great regret that I cannot follow any master games at anything more than a superficial level. As the modest and wise GM Aronian said: "To understand the beauty of the games played at our level, you have to be rated 2200 or higher."

About board order again, ebutaljib points out: "So the other teams could surprise them [the Azeris] too and make their strategy look less good." This actually makes board order selection a fascinating example of a problem in Game Theory in Mathematics. If one had prior probabilities, one could find the Nash Equilibrium.
The opportunity for teams to deviate from rating order means that there may be less opportunity to prepare for an opponent well in advance of the tournament. It is a subjective matter whether this added 'random factor' is desirable and if so, whether it adequately counterbalances Chris's view that strong players should not be permitted to pick up easy points against weak opposition. Incidentally, while Azerbaijan has a pronounced departure from rating order, deviations where made by other teams are not massively out of sync with ratings.

Morozevich has played fourth board for Russia several times, for example in the Olympiad 2008, when he was the country's highest rated player with an Elo of 2787. But it isn't that easy to just beat 2600-ish opponents, and he performed well below his rating (and lost against Efimenko). In 2006 Moro was the second highest rated Russian but played on board four also then, losing against Avrukh and Sargissian and performing below 2700. He had a better Elo performance on first board in 2004 than he has had on fourth board after that.

My bet for today:
Sasikiran - Grischuk 0-1 (Sasikirian has a few 2700+ scalps in this tournament but a 2650 player can't beat top GMs forever while Grischuk has been underrated in recent years and he is slowly returning to a place he belongs to).
Jakovenko - Harikrishna 1/2 (Harikrishna has reasonably good results against Russians in Olympiads while Jakovenko is slowly dropping rating points. I don't believe Jakovenko could lose with white but Harikrishna won't be a guy who will lose today).
Ganguly - Malakhov 0-1 (Ganguly has very a little 2700+ experience and his score against top GMs is very bad. I guess he is a bit overrated. Malakhov is becoming better and better recently. I suppose Malakhov should win)
Vitiugov - Arun 1/2 (Blind prediction since I don't know anything about GM from India).

It indeed looks like a smart strategy to put players like Morozevich and Mamedyarov on a low board. They are good at luring their opponents into messy positions in which it is difficult to find the optimal plan and/or to calculate variations. From such positions the stronger player has a bigger chance to win than from "normal" positions.

On a higher board this risky play might backfire, which often happens when these guys play in elite events.

The top game today is Gashimov-Gelfand but considering that they have lost 25 points together in this event, and Gashimov has three losses in a row, a rather short draw would be no surprise. Mamedyarov-Sutovsky will probably be a very entertaining game though. In Russia-India my guess is that Vitiugov will decide the match by winning with white against his 125 points lower rated opponent.

I don't think there should be any rule about composition of each team. The only rule necesarry is that once the board order is decided, then you must play by it. And thats exactly how it's done.

Seeding your best players on lower boards can also backfire. First, there are no guarantees that a player will score good on lower boards (evernthough he outranks his opponents) and second, if you have your best players on lower boards, then you will have to have your 2nd garniture on the upper boards, meaning that they will be outranked and may score teribly.
So in the end it's just a decision of the team captain which strategy it is going to apply. Why should this aspect of play be taken away by some rule? Each team should be able to adopt a strategy that they think will bring them most success.

One think that I find very good is that the final order is first applied by match points, rather than game points. I think this is how it should ever be. Afterall this is a TEAM competition, so the results of the whole team should be taken into account first, and only then the sum of all individual results as tie-breaker. If you use game points (like it used to be) then it's not a real team competition because it's just a sum of individual results.

Of course, Gashimov and Radjabov aren't even "2nd garniture".

The story of Gashimov-Gelfand today is short: Gelfand played the Petroff, the position was completely even and drawn as soon as the rules allow (move 30). The three other boards are still playing ... .

Greece-Armenia 3-1...

Russia won, Armenia lost. The US has the same amount of points as Russia. All the others are at least 3 points down. The US have to play with Greece, Armenia and Azerbaijan in final three rounds which are very strong teams for Americans.

This Russian team is very close to prove that they can better without Kramnik, Svilder and that they don't need Karjakin at all!

what you guys think about Anand as chess player? I bliev if Anand was born in Russia he would be by far the best player ever because of no chess tradition in India