Hi from Batumi

A quick note from Batumi, Georgia’s second biggest city, where the chess Olympiad is going on. I am here as captain for the Indian women’s team and Andrew is here as board one for Scotland. Colin and John opted not to play this time for various reasons.

With India we have won two matches 4-0 and will today play on board one. It would be strange not to stop for a moment and celebrate the occasion. Of course it has happened before and of course it is early in the event, but we are leading none the less!

I will give reports with ChessBase India most days. Yesterday Sagar had to leave, but we made this video in Round 1.

Round 2 saw some big upsets. Russia lost to Uzbekistan after a horrible blunder by Pogonina. And Ukraine were lucky things did not go bad. They were 1.5-0.5 up, but at some point lost on board 1 and 2! Especially board 2 was remarkable. Black missed an easy win in this position. Well, I call it easy now; I was lucking at the board during the game and I missed it too, even if it is rather simple:

 

 

Black to play and win

 

 

 

 

The solution can be found here.

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