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The final round and a chance for Canada to finish in the top 30 with a good performance.
Bluvshtein-Cuartas saw the Canadian board one face another player who was having a great event. A relatively quiet opening led to a roughly balanced middlegame, which suddenly got sharp when White decided to try and blast open Black's Kside with 27.h4!? The pawn sacrifice was reasonable (Rybka and I agree on that point), but wasn't really better for White. A nice back-and-forth tactical sequence begun with 35.e4!? won Black a second pawn. Rybka thinks White's problems began with 38.Qxf6, certainly a natural enough move. The computer prefers 38.Ka2, with the idea that by spending a move now, White makes the threat of 39.Qxf6 even stronger since 39...Qxd3 is no longer check. It recommends a line like 38.Ka2 Rc6 (38...Ne8 loses the Exchange to 39.Qh8+ and 40.Nxc5, while Rybka thinks 39.exd5 is even stronger) 39.exd5, and Black's K is on rather shaky ground. If the clocks on the website are to be believed, I suspect from that point Mark was forced to move rapidly and just try to make threats; Black's plan was to trade off at least one of the Qs or the Rs. When Black finally succeeded, Mark was dead.
Barrientos-Charbonneau was a Sicilian where White left a P en prise a little too long. Pascal snapped it up and was a little better. White eventually got his N to d6, but the difference between this game and the Zugic game below is that: 1) The N/d6 wasn't guarded by a pawn which meant its position was a bit unstable; and 2) There were many open lines for Black's Rs to try and make play on the wings (or indeed vs the N/d6 itself). Black erred with 26...Rd8 when White should have played 27.Nf5! (that part is pretty easy for a human to see) 27...Red7 (27...Ree8 28.Ne7+ Kf7 29.Qe3! - all Rybka) 28.Ng3 (missed that) 28...Qg4 29.Re4 Rxd3 30.cxd3 Qd1+ 31.Re1 Rxd3 (31...Qg4 32.h3!) 32.h3! (missed that, too) and White is better. To his credit, White did find 28.Nf5, but here it isn't so strong, though still good enough for a draw.
Zugic-Uribe was very instructive. White took advantage of his opponent's weak dark squares in a single-minded manner (11.f4; 16.c5!?). Black's 18...Nxg2?! was tough to resist, the problem with it being that White ends up by force into a fantastic N vs pathetic B late middlegame with 2 Rs each. With the centre totally secured - check out the monster on d6! - Igor's Rs attacked hither and yon. Black's defenses were simply too spread out and it was only a matter of time before he would be shedding material. He did, and tossed in the towel soon after.
Clavijo-Roussel was a blowout. White's opening was solid, and he may have kept a very slight edge with 12.a3, attempting to make play on the Qside. Instead, he opted to try his luck with a mating attack down the long diagonal. Unfortunately for him, that didn't go very far as Thomas's K position was totally safe. Black pretty much ignored White's posturing and went for the big space gainer starting with 16...a5.By the time this P made it to a3, White's position was already very bad. I suppose 24.f4 only helps Black by opening the e-file (Rybka certainly didn't like it), however how else is White to make any play? Once Thomas's pieces infiltrated, the finish was brutal, the a-pawn having a starring role.
Canada's final result was quite reasonable. Unlike most Olympiads, no one had a great result, but also no one stank out the joint. They were somewhat done in by the pairing system. If their ability to smash (rather than simply beat) lower-rated teams weren't so good, ironically they would have gotten tougher (read: more interesting) pairings.
I think that the players for the next team should seriously consider some sort of stacked team arrangement. It seems to me that it is better with these match points to put the machine-gunners on the bottom boards and have the more solid players play at the top. The goal is to maximize your chances of getting 2-2 or 2.5-1.5 scores but forgoing a lot of chances for 3.5 or 4-0 ones. For example, Zugic and/or Roussel should be on a higher board than Charbonneau, in my opinion. Not because I think that they are better players (because I don't personally think that they are), but because if they can hold the higher boards and Pascal wins pretty much all his games - even with Black! - they are going to win a lot of matches. Just one guy's opinion.
In any case, I hope that the Captain and players get together via email to figure out how they are going to approach the event in two years' time. It is quite conceivable that most, if not all, of the same players will be eligible next time which is a real plus for building a stronger team.
Bluvshtein-Cuartas saw the Canadian board one face another player who was having a great event. A relatively quiet opening led to a roughly balanced middlegame, which suddenly got sharp when White decided to try and blast open Black's Kside with 27.h4!? The pawn sacrifice was reasonable (Rybka and I agree on that point), but wasn't really better for White. A nice back-and-forth tactical sequence begun with 35.e4!? won Black a second pawn. Rybka thinks White's problems began with 38.Qxf6, certainly a natural enough move. The computer prefers 38.Ka2, with the idea that by spending a move now, White makes the threat of 39.Qxf6 even stronger since 39...Qxd3 is no longer check. It recommends a line like 38.Ka2 Rc6 (38...Ne8 loses the Exchange to 39.Qh8+ and 40.Nxc5, while Rybka thinks 39.exd5 is even stronger) 39.exd5, and Black's K is on rather shaky ground. If the clocks on the website are to be believed, I suspect from that point Mark was forced to move rapidly and just try to make threats; Black's plan was to trade off at least one of the Qs or the Rs. When Black finally succeeded, Mark was dead.
Barrientos-Charbonneau was a Sicilian where White left a P en prise a little too long. Pascal snapped it up and was a little better. White eventually got his N to d6, but the difference between this game and the Zugic game below is that: 1) The N/d6 wasn't guarded by a pawn which meant its position was a bit unstable; and 2) There were many open lines for Black's Rs to try and make play on the wings (or indeed vs the N/d6 itself). Black erred with 26...Rd8 when White should have played 27.Nf5! (that part is pretty easy for a human to see) 27...Red7 (27...Ree8 28.Ne7+ Kf7 29.Qe3! - all Rybka) 28.Ng3 (missed that) 28...Qg4 29.Re4 Rxd3 30.cxd3 Qd1+ 31.Re1 Rxd3 (31...Qg4 32.h3!) 32.h3! (missed that, too) and White is better. To his credit, White did find 28.Nf5, but here it isn't so strong, though still good enough for a draw.
Zugic-Uribe was very instructive. White took advantage of his opponent's weak dark squares in a single-minded manner (11.f4; 16.c5!?). Black's 18...Nxg2?! was tough to resist, the problem with it being that White ends up by force into a fantastic N vs pathetic B late middlegame with 2 Rs each. With the centre totally secured - check out the monster on d6! - Igor's Rs attacked hither and yon. Black's defenses were simply too spread out and it was only a matter of time before he would be shedding material. He did, and tossed in the towel soon after.
Clavijo-Roussel was a blowout. White's opening was solid, and he may have kept a very slight edge with 12.a3, attempting to make play on the Qside. Instead, he opted to try his luck with a mating attack down the long diagonal. Unfortunately for him, that didn't go very far as Thomas's K position was totally safe. Black pretty much ignored White's posturing and went for the big space gainer starting with 16...a5.By the time this P made it to a3, White's position was already very bad. I suppose 24.f4 only helps Black by opening the e-file (Rybka certainly didn't like it), however how else is White to make any play? Once Thomas's pieces infiltrated, the finish was brutal, the a-pawn having a starring role.
Canada's final result was quite reasonable. Unlike most Olympiads, no one had a great result, but also no one stank out the joint. They were somewhat done in by the pairing system. If their ability to smash (rather than simply beat) lower-rated teams weren't so good, ironically they would have gotten tougher (read: more interesting) pairings.
I think that the players for the next team should seriously consider some sort of stacked team arrangement. It seems to me that it is better with these match points to put the machine-gunners on the bottom boards and have the more solid players play at the top. The goal is to maximize your chances of getting 2-2 or 2.5-1.5 scores but forgoing a lot of chances for 3.5 or 4-0 ones. For example, Zugic and/or Roussel should be on a higher board than Charbonneau, in my opinion. Not because I think that they are better players (because I don't personally think that they are), but because if they can hold the higher boards and Pascal wins pretty much all his games - even with Black! - they are going to win a lot of matches. Just one guy's opinion.
In any case, I hope that the Captain and players get together via email to figure out how they are going to approach the event in two years' time. It is quite conceivable that most, if not all, of the same players will be eligible next time which is a real plus for building a stronger team.
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