US Grandmaster Alexander Shabalov (2599) lost an exciting and short struggle to the 19-year-old Indian prodigy Krishnan Sasikiran (2573). Two other games were fairly quickly drawn, leaving Abhijit Kunte (2538) on second board in a long struggle against grandmaster Kaidanov (2619), which the Indian player finally won.
In the top match, Germany scored a surprising win over Hungary by 3-1, putting Germany into clear first place, but followed by Israel, who defeated Cuba by 3-1.
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Myanmar has been accused of manipulating the rating system. As a result, a decision was made earlier this year to deduct one hundred rating points from every player from Myanmar.
On the women's side, on the top board, the Chinese Woman's Team drew all their games against the Dutch Women's team. The games were long and hard fought, all reaching the endgame.
The Dutch Woman's team consists of one girl from China, one from Hungary, one for Surinam and one from Georgia. All of them are married to Dutch men and three of them have Dutch children.
On match two of the women, former world champion Maia Chiburdanidze (2550) quickly beat title challenger Alisa Galliamova (2550). Chiburdanidze and Galliamova have exactly the same FIDE rating. They are rated number three and four in the world.
In the top men's match between Germany and Hungary, Hungary was heavily favored, because of having defeated Russia the day before. On first board, Arthur Jussupow of Germany (who used to spell his name Yusupov), quickly agreed to a gentlemen's draw (or an "old man's draw" as Jussupow later called it) against Peter Leko of Hungary.
However, on board three, Judit Polgar seemed to have a solid, although passive position against Rustem Dautov (2603), until Polgar played 29. e6-e5 for reasons which I cannot understand, only to have this pawn drop two moves later. Dautov won the endgame.
Today, for the first time, a local Turkish newspaper carried a report on this Chess Olympiad. Up until now, the newspapers have been carrying daily reports on that illegitimate, unauthorized chess event taking place in London, but have made no mention of the legitimate, authorized chess event right here in Istanbul.
The USA loss to India today is no doubt entirely due to the heavy hand of the harsh rule of Redman. Indeed, the chess politicians are arriving today and tomorrow to begin their heady deliberations on how to divide amongst themselves the projected millions in profits which they hope to reap from us already long suffering chess players.
Meanwhile, FIDE Commerce admitted in a notice posted on the wall today that its web site has experienced "technical difficulties". Please note this. This is the organization that Kirsan Ilyumzhinov wants to put in permanent control of World Chess.
I had a long talk today with Mikko Markkula of Finland, who is chairman of the FIDE Qualifications Commission. I was shocked to learn that the John Collins International Chess Tournament which was held at the Marshall Chess Club in New York City last June has been declared invalid and the three grandmaster norms earned in that event will not be recognized.
As to the reasons for this, Mikko Markkula explained that conditions are supposed to be equal for all players. In the Marshall Chess Club event, there were two round robin sections of six players each. After five games in each section, the top two players from each section qualified to the finals, where they each played four foreign grandmasters.
This gave the potential title norm qualifiers the nine games including three grandmasters required for a grandmaster norm, but since the grandmasters only played four games each, this meant that conditions were unequal, according to Mikko Markkula.
More than that, two of the grandmasters played only three games and another two played only two, which caused their results to seem suspicious, said Mikko Markkula. This included grandmasters Wojtkiewicz and Sher.
Of course, this was done because of the difficulty and indeed virtual impossibility of assembling four foreign grandmasters for a tournament in New York City. Wojtkiewicz flew in from Germany especially to play his games in this event. If it had been a requirement that all grandmasters play nine games, then the tournament could not have been held.
Not only does this ruling hurt the organizer, Leon Haft, and the players who got the norms, which include Rogelio Barcenilla of the Philippines and Igor Zugic of Canada, but it has serious implications for chess in America, because the John Collins event was sponsored by Chess-in-the-Schools, formerly the American Chess Foundation, and ever since the death of Fan Adams last year, Chess-in-the-Schools has been slowly discontinuing most of its chess-related activities, plus it evicted the Manhattan Chess Club from its premises in April.
It was a great surprise that Chess-in-the-Schools put up the considerable amount of money required to host the John Collins International, and if this event is declared invalid, that may well be the last international chess event that Chess-in-the-Schools ever sponsors. Chess-in-the-Schools is already searching for an excuse to stop chess altogether.
Mikko Markkula also said that he does not like multiple re-entries in Goichberg USA chess events and he feels that those events should be declared invalid for FIDE title norm purposes.
I would like to present some chess games, but there are too many problems with the official web site and many game scores are wrong. Here is one game score that I know to be correct, because I watched the game being played.
Sam Sloan
[Event "34th Chess Olympiad (men)"] [Site "Istanbul"] [Date "2000.10.31"] [Round "4"] [White "Dautov, Rustem"] [Black "Polgar, Judit"] [WhiteElo "2606"] [BlackElo "2656"] [WhiteCountry "GER"] [BlackCountry "HUN"] [Result "1-0"] [Remark "1690"] [PresId "1915"] 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 b6 4. g3 Ba6 5. Qa4 Bb7 6. Bg2 c5 7. dxc5 Bxc5 8. O-O O-O 9. Nc3 Ne4 10. Qc2 Nxc3 11. Qxc3 d5 12. Rd1 Nd7 13. Bg5 Qe8 14. cxd5 Bxd5 15. b4 Be7 16. Bxe7 Qxe7 17. Rac1 Rfd8 18. Nd4 Nf6 19. b5 Bxg2 20. Kxg2 Rd5 21. Nc6 Qd7 22. Qc2 Qb7 23. a4 h6 24. e4 Rc5 25. Qd3 Rxc1 26. Rxc1 a6 27. Rc4 axb5 28. axb5 Qc7 29. Rd4 e5 30. Rc4 Qd7 31. Nxe5 Qe6 32. Nc6 Ra2 33. e5 Qd5+ 34. Qxd5 Nxd5 35. Rd4 Nc3 36. Rd8+ Kh7 37. Rd7 Nxb5 38. Rxf7 Rc2 39. Nb4 Re2 40. Nd3 Na3 41. Kf3 Rc2 42. e6 Rc8 43. Ke4 Re8 44. Kd5 b5 45. Rb7 Nc2 46. e7 Kg6 47. Ke6 1-0