Great wall

China have won the Olympiad in Tromsø. I believe that we can now look forward to a sustained Chinese dominance in international team events, reminiscent of the Soviets. The Chinese take sporting success very seriously and in China international competitive chess is most definitely regarded as a sport, with all the benefits in state backing which that implies. China finished with 19 out of 22 possible, while Hungary, India, Russia and Azerbaijan followed at a respectable 2 points distance.
 
In the other bitter contest at Tromsø, the former world champion Garry Kasparov failed to unseat the incumbent, the eccentric billionaire and self-avowed alien abductee Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, in the battle for the World Chess Federation presidency. Undoubtedly Kasparov would have been better for elite chess development, but the many modestly sized national bodies which mainly constitute the electorate are, by and large, not overly stuffed with grandmasters.
 
World champion Magnus Carlsen scored 6/9 for Norway — a total which included a couple of unexpected losses. This result placed him in overall sixth position for rating performance on board one. The individual gold medal winner in this category was Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, with silver going to England’s Michael Adams who was undefeated throughout the event.
 
One of Carlsen’s better moments was his win as Black against the world ranked no. 3 Fabiano Caruana, representing Italy.
 
Caruana-Carlsen: Tromsø Olympiad 2014; Centre Counter
 
1 e4 d5 2 exd5 Qxd5 3 Nc3 Qd8 4 d4 Nf6 5 Nf3 Bg4 6 h3 Bxf3 7 Qxf3 c6 8 Ne2 Carlsen actually faced this opening when playing White in an earlier round at Tromsø. Carlsen-Djukic continued with 8 Qd3 e6 9 g3 and White went on to win. 8 … e6 9 g4 Qd5 10 Bg2 Nbd7 11 Qg3 Qc4 12 Qb3 Qxb3 13 axb3 Bd6 14 c4 a6 15 Be3 0-0-0 16 0-0-0 White is certainly slightly better here but the black position is very solid, offering no targets for attack.