2024 Chess Olympiad: Round 2

2024 Chess Olympiad: Round 2
Thursday, 12 September 2024

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In Round 2 of the Chess Olympiad, we saw more drama as Levon Aronian managed tremendous risks in his game against Zhenyoung Wong of Singapore. Aronian escaped first-round disaster after losing a minor piece. In this game, he was down a rook, but had an attack on the black king. Upsets are still common in the second round as the ratings gap closes, but Aronian would rather not resort to these methods to win his games.

“At the moment, Levon is struggling. His game today is very dangerous for him, and we can’t really afford to lose a game. We’re playing a solid team, and they are probably going to make two draws with the white pieces.” 
~Fabiano Caruana

The U.S. ended up winning 4-0 anyway. India won 4-0 over Iceland, a nation that, once upon a time, had the most Grandmasters in the world, per capita. Hungarian import Sanan Sjugirov won again in his first Olympiad for his adopted nation. Uzbekistan kept pace winning 3.5-.5 over a depleted Egyptian team with Bassem Amin and Ahmed Adly.

One “upset” occurred when Canada beat Norway with Magnus Carlsen sitting out. Perhaps it should not be as much of a surprise since, without Carlsen, Canada’s strength puts them in the middle of the pack. Although there were no real upset wins, some valuable 1/2-points were shed. Israel was held by Ireland in an unlikely result. Going forward, we will see closer matches.

Women

There was nothing surprising about the results on the top boards in the women’s section as all of the rating favorites prevailed. There were a couple of board upsets as Ukraine’s Yulia Osmak (2471) went down against Lithuania’s Olena Martynkova (2176). China continues its march despite not having its top four players (also the top four in the world). Except for two-time gold medalist Guo Qi, the other names are not Olympiad mainstays. Rising star Lu Miaoyi is the future of Chinese chess at age 14 and the current national champion!

China’s Lu Miaoyi
Photo by Michal Walusza

Olympiad Spotlight

Photos: Michal Walusza, Mark Livshitz, Maria Emelianova, Anna Shtourmann

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