A very good match for us today, a comfortable win of 3.5-0.5 against Kosovo. We controlled the match from start to finish and never risked anything.

We were quickly winning on board 4, Nikolovski was winning after the opening, more or less, although the realisation took time and in fact he was the last to finish!

On board 1 Nedev had things under control with black in a KID against FM Saraci and they simplified to a draw.

I obtained an advantage after the opening against FM Ermeni and generally played a good game. I made a few imprecisions, but he didn’t capitalise on them and I won after displaying some elementary technique in the endgame. It was a sweet revenge for the missed win against the same opponent at the ECC in Skopje last year!

Board 3 was a messy game, but Lazov kept it cool and won in mutual time-trouble. If only we had the majority of the matches like this!

On the top boards USA beat Norway (Caruana-Carlsen draw, another Scandinavian from the World Champion, like in Tromso, but Caruana was more careful this time) and Russia beat the hosts winning both their games with white (Kramnik played 1 e4 against Radjabov and Grischuk played my favourite move in the French Winawer, 7 a4, against Naiditsch). Ukraina beat India and are shared first with USA. Tomorrow it’s Georgia-USA (Jobava has the best performance on board 1!), Czech Republic-Ukraine and India-Russia. We play Egypt, who have two over-2600 GMs on boards 1 and 2.

I’ll keep it short again, I need time to get some preparation done and rest.