Istanbul 2000 – The 34th Chess Olympiad Coming Soon!

The Great Book of Chess Olympiads

XXXIV Chess Olympiad – Istanbul 2000

• Edition 1
• Completed 11/16 of the work.
• Number of pages: 1717.
• Number of games: 2772.

On the top eleven boards, the highest match score was merely 2.5 : 1.5. This was generally the most common result in this round. The losses by Romanishin (Ukraine) 2602 against Rublevsky (Russia) 2653, Dautov (Germany) 2603 against Kiril Georgiev (Bulgaria) 2674, Anastasian (Armenia) 2558 against Judit Polgar (Hungary) 2656, Krasenkow (Poland) 2702 against Van Wely (Netherlands) and Dato (Philippines) 2345 against De Firmian (USA) 2567 proved to be the only decisive games and therefore determined the match results.

The Polish team continued to perform rather poorly. After this round, the Polish players’ scores were as follows: Michal Krasenkow 2.5/7, Tomasz Markowski 3.5/8, Macieja 3.5/7, Bartosz Socko 7.5/9, Robert Kempinski 5.5/8 and Pawel Blehm 3/5. Only Socko and Kempinski played well, while Krasenkow’s and Markowski’s point tally was disastrous. The Danes (average rating in this match 2580) earned a valuable draw against China (2633) thanks to Lars Hansen’s 2562 win against Peng Xiaomin 2655. Peng Xiaomin had been playing superbly, and after ten rounds had amassed 8 points without a single loss. However, he could not withstand the rigors of the tournament and finished with a modest 0.5 points from 3 games. The increasingly strong Indians 2538 drew with Brazil 2573. The decisive results came on the top boards – Sasikiran 2594 lost to Milos 2644, but Kunte 2538 leveled the match by defeating Leitao 2569. Romania (2491) were licking their wounds after a devastating 0.0 : 4.0 loss to Russia in the previous round and won convincingly against Canada (2459) – interestingly, only Black won in this match.

After Round XI, Russia led with 30.5 points (at that time the so-called “small points” were counted, i.e. the points scored in individual games), followed by Germany with 29.0 and Ukraine with 28.5. Behind them came Hungary, Bulgaria, Armenia, the Netherlands and the USA – all on 28 points.

After a narrow win against the Philippines, USA team captain Alexander Shabalov said – “this is like a 0–4 loss for us, because our medal chances have dropped to zero” – and the demoralized United States team... went on to lose the next two matches in Rounds XII and XIII.

Poland, after losing to the Netherlands (three draws and a loss by Krasenkow), dropped to 15th place.