Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Magician Aronian
The 45th Chess Olympiad took place in Budapest (Hungary)
The Chess Olympiad, held every two years, is the chess event with highest participation. In the 45th Chess Olympiad, 380 national teams from almost 200 countries competed in an 11-round Swiss tournament played over four boards.
It’s worth mentioning that there is a wide range of participants both by rating and age. For instance, the oldest player in Budapest was the 80-year-old WIM Rani Hamid (ELO 1900) from Bangladesh playing her 20th Olympiad. At the other end of the scale, the youngest participants were two nine-years-olds lady players. WFM Bodhana Sivanandan (ELO 2196) from England who played her first Olympiad. And Skye Attieh (ELO 1675) from Lebanon.
The top seed in the open section was USA. And one of their members, GM Levon Aronian, is the star of today’s post. Aronian is an Armenian chess player who now is playing for USA.
In round 2, USA faced the team Singapore. Caruana played at board one and quickly won his game but he expressed concern about his teammates’ boards. GMs Lenier Dominguez and Ray Robson had highly-drawish positions with the black pieces, while GM Levon Aronian had sacrificed material and was in trouble.
During an interview immediately after his game, Caruana mentioned about Aronian’s game: “It’s normal to have these first-round jitters, but it looks like today is maybe worse, because the last I saw maybe his position was just losing—I didn’t see a move for him!”
In the following diagram you can follow the last part of Aronian’s game.
The final outcome was the result of Aronian’s masterful use of his resources and his opponent’s precarious time management. Aronian brought the victory to USA and showed why he is a seasoned master.
Eventually, USA went on to win 4-0 after Robson and Dominguez’s opponents cracked in long endgames.
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