WCL Newsletter Thanksgiving Edition:
Olympic Success for Team U.S.A.!

U.S. Gives Thanks: Men & Women Win Medals!

Tuesday was smash day for the U.S. Olympiad teams. Both the men and the women triumphed to take the Bronze medals in their respective sections. This Thanksgiving, I know I'll be counting the U.S. Men's 3.5-0.5 upset over chess powerhouse Ukraine. It seemed impossible: in order to medal, the U.S. team would need to defeat a team that outrated them on every board--and by a large margin. The U.S. would need good tiebreaks in order to slip past other contenders with the same number of match points for the bronze. But could our U.S. team really turn out an overwhelming victory when it mattered most?

The answer: "Yes We Can!" On first board, GM Gata Kamsky dominated GM Vassily Ivanchuk, while on Board 3, GM Alexander Onischuk defeated GM Pavel Elijanov. GM Hikaru Nakamura was pressing an edge with the Black pieces against GM Sergey Karjakin, but the young Ukrainian slipped out of the stranglehold and held the draw. At that point, it was up to our own U.S. Champion, GM Yury Shulman, to do something incredible. From the Black side of a passive-looking French Defense, Shulman won a multi-hour endgame battle, forcing GM Zahar Efimenko to resign on move 84. After hours of tiebreak calculation, the 3.5-0.5 victory was enough for the U.S. Men's team to take bronze!

But even as the men anticipated the results of the tiebreak calculations in which hung the fate of their own shot at Olympic glory, our women's team was already celebrating having captured third place in the women's section. The women's team had what was perhaps one of their most impressive performances in American chess history, earning two individual performance medals in addition to the overall medal. WGM Anna Zatonskih, who scored 8.0/11.0, took the gold medal for her performance on Board 2 with a 2571 performance rating. WGM Rusudan Goletiani earned the silver medal for Board 3; she had a performance rating of 2542, scoring 9.0/11.0 points.

Individual performances for the men were also strong. World-championship challenger GM Gata Kamsky, who will now be playing his match against GM Veselin Topalov in February, churned out a 2768 ELO rating performance in Dresden. He went with a 6.5/10.0 score against an all-Grandmaster field, including nine regular grandmasters and one WGM. Although he suffered one loss to GM Teimour Radjabov in Round 4, he defeated well-known GMs including Peter Svidler of Russia in Round 8, Sasikiran Krishnan of India in Round 9, and, of course, Vassily Ivanchuk in Round 11. Nakamura and Onischuk also finished with 6.5/11.0 points, churning out 2695 and 2714 ELO performances, respectively.

This has just been a brief summary of all the exciting results we had during this year's Olympiad. The best coverage of the last-round goings-on at the Olympiad is FM Michael Klein's excellent report for Chess Life Online. Still looking for more Olympiad news? Well, there are plenty of places to find it. You can read the U.S. Chess Federation's official press release, the victory announcement by Klein for our women's and men's teams, or even just peruse around the entire Chess Life Online coverage of November's chess news for many more articles, including one by Your Kindly Editor (YKE) on the International Youth Camp, discussed in more depth below.

Photo credit above: Helen Jamison

Stories from the Olympiad

This year's Olympiad was home to many fascinating stories, including the hosting of the first International Youth Camp in conjunction with an Olympiad--a multicultural experience put on by the host country for students of the guest twelve nations--among many others. One of the best places for following the Olympiad's many side stories is the Chess.FM Blog. Throughout the Olympiad, videos were posted constantly, from my brief coverage of my experiences at the Bermuda Party to Macauley Peterson's "Meet a Top Team" series. Stay tuned for my video interview with William Hook, an octogenarian who plays for the British Virgin Isles. No matter what kind of Olympiad story you're looking for, the Chess.FM Blog is certainly a good place to start.

KibBlitzing with Tyler Hughes & Courtney Jamison

Your Kindly Editor was certainly not the only American to attend the International Youth Camp in Dresden. NM Tyler Hughes, reigning U.S. Junior Closed Champion, and Courtney Jamison, the reigning Polgar champion, also braved the Atlantic Ocean to meet with their chess-playing peers from around the world. This week, the two Americans are on board for our Turkey-Day KibBlitz Special. Hughes rattles off his answers in a focused, concentrated way, executing perhaps the most brutal KibBlitz since Dan Yeager. Jamison prefers a longer answers, making for an interesting, playful contrast. However many words they use to say it, though, both Hughes and Jamison lived, learned, laughed, and loved on their trip to Germany. So check out their KibBlitz!

Chess.FM Update

Alterman: Central Attack Philidor Defense

"Pawns are the soul of chess," once opined the mild-mannered 18th century French musical composer Francois-Andre Philidor, who was also the most famous chess player of his day. He championed 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 as an alternative to the more common 2 ...Nc6. The seemingly passive defense went from obscurity to everyone having a closer look in the late 1960s with Bent Larsen's pamphlet, "Why Not the Philidor Defense?"

Popular recent books though by GM Tony Kosten, and more lately The Philidor Files by GM Christian Bauer, has seen a revival in the Philidor at club level. And in his latest Gambit Guide series, GM Boris Alterman takes a closer look at the Philidor's Defense, including his main idea of the counter-gambit with 3...f5!? Watch now.