Today we lost the match against Croatia. I was black against GM Palac and got a comfortable position after the opening, then even a more pleasant one, but there was no way to progress. It was the first game to finish in a moment when it seemed that we can win the match!

Palac-Colovic, draw

Nedev on 1 was outprepared in a sharp Najdorf, but it wasn’t fatal. After some inaccuracies by his opponent he got a good position, only to spoil it with several mistakes. At that point Mitkov was winning on board 3 against Kozul and Bogdanovski on 4 had a good position. But then Bogdanovski allowed an intrusion on the queenside and couldn’t create enough counterplay in the centre. So we lost the match (and even though Mitkov is still playing, it’s not clear that he can win anymore, but that’s irrelevant for the final outcome), I’d say a bit unfortunately.

On the other boards, the surprise was the draw between Russia and Bulgaria. Kramnik beat Topalov with white (in 2014, whoever plays white wins) but Karjakin made a very uncharacteristic mistake (20 b5) and from a clearly better position got a worse one which he couldn’t hold.

20 b5?? c5, instead 20 c5! with an attack

Carlsen played Smyslov’s 5…Na6 in the Slav against Aronian and got a solid, but passive position. It didn’t bother him much to hold it even though he was certainly suffering.

Radjabov blundered and lost to Perunovic, and Azerbaijan drew with Serbia.

Ivanchuk continued his suicidal mission and instead of pressing for a win against Kasimdzhanov, he blundered to lose again.

25 Rc7 is the only move and Ivanchuk’s 25 Nc6?? loses after 25…Rc5!

Tomorrow is the first free day and tonight is the infamous Bermuda party. I’m definitely looking forward to both!

I didn’t play today against Albania and the most important thing is that we won! It wasn’t easy, but the match was under control all the time. We shouldn’t have lost on board 2, in fact we were winning on both boards 1 (Nedev) and 2 (Pancevski) at some point and we only managed to get half a point on those two! Luckily, Mitkov on 3 squeezed out a win and Bogdanovski won a nice game on 4.

Tomorrow we’re paired with Croatia and a tough match awaits us.

On the top boards, Russia was lucky not to lose against China (Kramnik still had his box of hazelnuts), while Carlsen won a great game in a Closed Sicilian against Wojtaszek, Anand’s second, employing Spassky’s idea in similar positions to put the knight on h3.

From Spassky to Carlsen

As I had more time today, I took a walk in the less central parts of Tromso and I must say I was impressed. It looks like a sleepy fairy-tale town! Take a look:

This is about two types of provocations I noticed in the last two days.

The first one is the legal, over-the-board provocation as a result of a daring opening choice. In Round 2, as I was walking about I noticed the following position in the game Shirov-Sulskis

5…Nd5 against Shirov???

Shirov sank into deep thought here. It was obvious that black had done his homework and was daring him to enter the wild stuff after 6 Nf7. Shirov thought for more than 30 minutes and eventually went for it – his nerves and self-confidence still serve him well! It appeared that he didn’t know the theory of this line, but quite surprisingly, this actually worked in his favour! On move 9 the following position appeared:

White to move

During the game I actually remembered that there were some analyses on this line published in some of the recent Yearbooks (after checking now, it’s in YB 110), but I only remembered that the conclusion was ‘unclear’ after best play. The article suggests 9 0-0 here, while Shirov’s move, 9 a3 is supposedly a mistake that leads to a win for black. After the forced sequence 9…Nc2 10 Kd1 Na1 11 Nd5 the critical position arises:

11…Qh4!

This is the moment when Shirov’s choice of a bad line served him well – Sulskis probably concentrated all his efforts on the main move, 9 0-0, and couldn’t recall the refutation here, in spite of spending a lot of time! He went 11…Kd6 here, which is a mistake. After 12 d4 it was only Shirov who was enjoying himself until the end of the game on move 28. All in all, an interesting psychological choice by Sulskis that backfired, primarily because the wild position that arose was more to Shirov’s taste.

Another provocation that I’d like to talk about happened in our match against the Russians. I’m not even sure whether I should call what happened a ‘provocation’ as I don’t know whether it was done on purpose. But it certainly was annoying!

It concerns none other than Vladimir Kramnik! Before the game began he started taking out stuff out of a bag that he kept under the table – a few bars of chocolate, a box of hazelnuts, a package of raisins. He placed these on the table next to the bottle of water that is already on the table for every player. The problems started when he started to eat all those things, making cracking noises when breaking the chocolate, a ruffling noise when separating the chocolate from the paper, a plastic-popping noise when opening the box of almonds, and squeaking noises when opening the thermos he kept under the table. He must have enjoyed this picnic as he munched all this food with appetite. Normally I don’t pay attention to these things, but this time it was pretty difficult to ignore as he was playing next to me! Several times I tried to catch his eye, but he avoided eye contact. This behaviour lasted throughout the game. I regret that I didn’t say anything as my team-mates were also annoyed and our captain even protested with the arbiter. Nothing came out of it.

I am a big admirer of Kramnik’s chess and I respect him very much, but what I witnessed showed another picture of the man. I still cannot say whether he was aware he was annoying us (I hope not), but piling up food on a chess board reminds me of an obscure amateur open tournament played after work and something not becoming the status of a former World Champion. Botvinnik would have shuddered, even though he probably would have approved of the thermos! Jokes aside, in any case it was an unpleasant situation and I hope somebody draws his attention to the discomfort he causes with this behaviour.

Well, it could have been better. The anticipated match ended in a 0-4 loss for us, but even though we didn’t last long, judging from the positions we should have gotten at least something.

In my game with Svidler, a Najdorf with 6 h3 (via a Scheveningen move-order), he introduced a very interesting new concept in a well-known position – 11 Nce2 with the idea to defend the knight with c3, thus eliminating all black’s counterplay on the queenside.

with the idea of c3

In truth, I understimated this concept. If black wants to achieve good play he needs to do something urgently. I continued with the normal moves like 0-0 and Qc7 but ended up in a passive position without counterplay.

13…Re8 with the idea of Bf8, defending against Qd2,f5 and Bh6

I decided to secure my kingside first, but when the moves ran out I was again faced with the problem of finding a plan. I was burning a lot of time and with nothing constructive to do I jumped at the first opportunity to push …d5, but it wasn’t very good. I realised, however, that if I didn’t do it, then he’d just pile up on the kingside and mate me.

18…d5?!, not good, but what to do?

He played the remaining of the game well, never allowing me any chance.

One of the things I regret in my career is that I never got the chance to play these guys on a regular basis. In those rare occassions that I play them I always have the feeling that if only I had more practice playing them I’d be so much more successful not only in the games against them, but also my level of play would be much higher. You can’t expect to shine in the one game you get to play every 3 or 4 years (or even more rarely).

In view of the above-said, now I hope we continue playing well so we get more chances and play teams like France, Ukraine, USA, Armenia, China, Azerbaijan… Now that would be great!

Today, quite surprisingly, we didn’t play on one of the top boards as I expected. In fact, we played on the last board of the teams who had scored victories in the first round. This was very disappointing, as for just one board we could have played on board 1 against the Russians. But little did I know…

The match against the Dominican Republic went well, even though not entirely smoothly. I forgot my analysis and failed to punish his opening mistakes, in another Maroczy Bind like in round 1, and then started to take too many risks. At one moment I even sacrificed my queen!

He should have taken the queen!

But he took on e6 instead and I had an advantage but couldn’t find a way to increase it. I was posing problems until the very end and he succumbed eventually. We won 3-1 and the biggest surprise was when the pairings for tomorrow’s round came out.

To our great surprise, Mother Russia awaits us! We’re all excited and looking forward to tomorrow’s match!

The first round of the Olympiad took place today, on 2 August, Macedonia’s biggest national holiday, Ilinden. And what better present to our Republic if not a 4-0 win for both men’s and women’s team at the chess Olympiad! My grandfather’s name was Ilija and playing on Board 1 for the first time in my career and winning in 24 moves I dedicate this win to his memory.

The final position. Grandad would have approved.

The first rounds at Olympiads have become very messy after the introduction of the anti-cheating measures. Imagine more than 1500 people (that’s more than 5 full airplanes) waiting to go through only 5 metal detectors. Needless to say this precaution made the zero tolerance rule look ridiculous and the first round started with significant delay. And luckily there was no rain so at least everybody got inside dry, if somewhat annoyed. I’m curious to see if things will improve in the coming days.

Tomorrow we expect to go to the top boards, so it should be fun.