Chess Olympiad 2020
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Chess Olympiad
It was the Quarter Finals between India vs Armenia.
What we expected didnt turned out as that, it was quite sad what happened today at the Quarter Finals of FIDE Online Olympiad 2020.
India was taking on Armenia and it seemed to be nail biting encounter.
The encounters were,
Viswanathan Anand VS Levon Aronian.
Vidit Santosh Gujrathi VS Gabriel Sargissian.
Humpy Koneru VS Elina Danielian.
Harika Dronavalli VS Lilit Mkrtchian.
Nihal Sarin VS Haik Martirosyan.
Vantika Agarwal VS Anna Sargsyan.
As expected it was a close encounter, on Board 1 none players were able to outclass each other ending up with a draw.
On Board 2, Gabriel couldn't handle the pressure that resulted he blundering his queen. Vidit is a class player to grab the opportunity and converted it into a win.
On Board 3, Humpy was a pawn down and she couldn't hold up the position, hence losing the game.
On Board 4, Harika converted an equal game and outplayed her opponent scoring a point.
On Board 5, Nihal was pawn up but chances were slim to win. It seemed like a draw but his opponent lost due to time out.
On Board 6, Vantika was beaten by Anna which made the end result 3.5 to 2.5, where India won.
Exciting for the Second Round, were there was one change in Indian camp. Praggnanandha replaced Nihal and Armenia was rock solid with their Round 1 team but the matches didn't started.
Later on we came to know that Armenia appealed the arbiters to check Martirosyan game as his internet was stable still he lost on time.
The situation was examined and there was no problem from Chess.com server, but Armenia said we had no issue with the internet as they all were playing together from the same place. Elina who was playing Humpy also did not have any issue in her game so how come Martirosyan did.
But according to this logic we can also say that if Elina didn't have any issue in her game so how come Martirosyan had as they were playing from the same server.
The scenario being so complicated as what was the problem and then an official appeal was made to Appeal's Community, they reviewed it and did not withhold the appeal stating India has won the first round therefore proceed with the second round.
However, Armenia didn't agree to the decision and decided to quit the tournament at this stage which was extremely surprising and in fact their Captain Levon Aronian tweeted,
" As a leader of 3 times Olympic Champion I feel very dissatisfied with the FIDE's decision to reject our just appeal. In our match against India Haik Martirosyan lost on time due to disconnection from chess.com. We proved that our connection was stable."
This was followed by another tweet,
" and it was a problem to access to chess.com, not on our side. All we asked for was to continue that game from the same position and same time. Is it too much to ask?"
The disappointment was clear by the Captain's tweets. Hence, Armenia withdrew from the tournament and to this FIDE tweeted,
" Following the disconnection of Haik Martirosyan in Match 1 of the Quarterfinals against India. Armenia filed an official appeal that was rejected by the Appeals Committee. Armenia defaulted Match 2. As a result, India is through to the semifinals.
It was quite disheartening for Indian players as Harika Dronavalli tweeted,
" Good to qualify for the semifinals of the FIDE Online Olympiad. It was very unfortunate the circumstances under which it happened and not the way we would have like to qualify. Armenia is a tough opponent and it would have been good to have another tough fight.
Clearly we won but the chess lost. On what happened today in India v/s Armenia match.
The result of the match though favours India was a pretty sad way to win while 40K+ chess fans from India were witnessing an exciting match. The Armenian asking for fair-play while being justified, even then asking to continue from the same positions by the captain Aronian doesn't make sense.
In a nutshell, it was a sad day for chess. Let the bygones be bygones, moving forward with lots of love and support for team India. Be it whosoevers fault, Chess.com or their Internet. Withdrawing like this is not good sportsmanship.
And even of this was Chess.com 's fault, I don't think they have a personal vendetta against any of their players and it was purely a technical difficulty..
So you can blame it on x,y,z factors but this is just arrogance.
At last India is through to Semifinals and will be facing Poland after Poland beat Azerbaijan in the Armageddon.
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