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Chess: England seeded eighth as Carlsen targets gold at Budapest Olympiad
Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, competes for one of the few missing honours in his career at this week’s Olympiad in Budapest, where he leads sixth-seeded Norway.
Carlsen’s Olympiad record is surprisingly modest. He has averaged just 70% in seven appearances, with his best performance a bronze medal in 2022. In 2010, he lost to England’s Michael Adams after opening with the dubious North Sea Defence 1 e4 g6 2 d4 Nf6?! 3 e5 Nh5.
The Olympiad got off to an uncertain start on Tuesday. Forty teams, 20 each from the Open and Women’s contests, were missing due to visa problems, the opening ceremony could not be broadcast live, and some early arrivals were charged triple the normal rate for hotel rooms.
The drawing of lots for colours was an imaginative concept. The Olympiad torch was taken from Chennai through 11 countries, On its final journey through the streets of Budapest, the torch was carried by Judit Polgar, the all-time No 1 woman, clad in an all-red outfit. Judit lit the on stage cauldron, then her double gold medal sisters, Susan and Sofia, entered to make the draw for colours by choosing one of two Rubik’s Cubes hidden inside a gigantic version. Every Olympiad participant received a Rubik’s Cube as a souvenir.
Fide has special programmes to boost women’s chess and the rising proportion of mothers in national women’s teams. One of these is ChessMom, where Olympiad mothers with children under a year old plus their carers are all hosted as part of the team delegation.
Fide has just announced that Google will be the title sponsor of the 14-game $2.6m Ding Liren v Gukesh Dommaraju world championship match, to be played in Singapore in November-December.
The Fide congress, held during the Olympiad, will include a controversial motion to restore full voting and participation rights to Russia and Belarus, who were banned in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine. That year’s Olympiad was switched from Moscow to Chennai at short notice.
Reports say that the motion already has enough votes to be carried. If it happens there could be consequences similar to 1939, when war broke out in the middle of the Olympiad, France and Poland refused to play Germany, and those matches were scored 2-2.
England’s open team are seeded eighth, and England women 15th. Nine-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan, England’s youngest ever player in any sport, made her Olympiad debut in the opening round and defeated her South Korean opponent in 42 moves. In the first two rounds England beat Taiwan 3.5-0.5 and Mexico 3-1. England women defeated South Korea 4-0 and Denmark 3-1. David Howell, the 2022 individual gold medallist, was held to a draw by GM Raymond Song.
Who will win? The open event looks a race between the United States and India, with the latter having the edge due to youth, which is always an advantage in Olympiads. China won gold on their last appearance, but Ding, the world champion, is in poor form and could be a weak link. England, with an ageing squad, will do well to justify their high seeding.
Only one of the world’s top 10 women, Nana Dzagnidze, is competing. Her Georgian team and India are the top seeds. China have a chance, but Beijing has the top four women in the world and China would have been long odds on if this quartet had taken part. England have their best women’s team for years, a blend of youth and experience, with the potential to improve significantly on its modest No 16 seeding position.
The Olympiad games can be followed move by move on either the official site, chessbase or lichess, starting at 2.15pm BST daily.
Last weekend, Carlsen won the Chess.com Speed Championship in Paris after defeating Hans Niemann 17.5-12.5 in their first live meeting since the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. when Niemann’s victory sparked cheating allegations and a $100m lawsuit. He was 10 points clear before relaxing in the last few bullet games. Afterwards he acknowledged Niemann’s recent advance to world No 16 and said: “Niemann has become a good player, a very good player, but thinking that our levels were going to be close was unrealistic.”
In his best game against Niemann, Carlsen channelled his inner Bobby Fischer, initiating an attack in the US legend’s distinctive style. The finish could be 26 Rc7 Kg8 27 Bxg7 Qxg7 28 Bxd5! exd5 29 e6 and Black’s position collapses.
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The semi-finals and final were played at a Parisian eSports venue, where the players sat at computers across from each other, wearing noise-cancelling headphones which played pre-selected music during the games. The hundreds of spectators were therefore free to talk and cheer as they watched from tiered seating.
Carlsen went on to defeat the in-form Alireza Firouzja by a record 23.5-7.5 margin in the final, concluding the match with an eight-game winning streak.
The world No 1 reflected on his performance: “Even though my average level has gone down a little from my peak, I feel I can still be very close to it on specific days. I think I’ll be around for a while still. They will have to earn it. I’m not going to necessarily give it to them.”
The Carlsen v Firouzja final was a significant moment, because Carlsen had stated previously that Firouzja was the only opponent that interested him for a world championship match. The Norwegian declared that he wanted to be in his best form, and he was. Carlsen won by wide margins in the 5+1 and 3+1 blitz sections, and was at his peak in the final 1+1 bullet games.
The overall impression given to viewers of this one-sided contest was that Carlsen, who in 2023 abdicated his classical world crown after a decade, was treating it as a substitute for the 2022 match against Firouzja which never happened, and was also making a statement for the continuing debate on whether Carlsen, Garry Kasparov or Fischer ranks as the greatest player of all time.
3937: 1...Qa3+ 2 Ke2 Qb2+ 3 Rd2 Bh5+! 4 Rxh5 Rxd2+ 5 Qxd2 c3! 6 Qxb2 cxb2 when Black queens her b2 pawn and wins with queen v rook.
