ChessBase has up a translation of a Berliner Zeitung interview with Levon Aronian. Some fun stuff from a fun guy.

Mr Aronian, since the beginnings of the game men have dominated chess. Why is that?

Women cannot play chess.

But that is no explanation. Wasn't it your sister who taught you chess?

That is true, but women are generally much too emotional for chess. If they want to play really well they have to change their character and suppress their natural instincts. They have to take on male qualities. After all chess is a rough and hard game. . . .

In chess is it good to be happily or unhappily in love?

Hmm. Perhaps it is better for your game if you are in love. On the other hand when you are in love there is a danger that your passion is not enough for both, and that you are going to be disappointed with your game and at the same time disappoint your lady.

Are you speaking from experience?

Yes.

Oh, I think you've disappointed plenty of ladies all at once with this one. There is no denying that women on the whole have not been successful at chess. The disparity at the top echelon cannot be entirely accounted for by the small number of women who take up the game. But as with, say, investment banking and other insanely obsessive and competitive endeavors, I don't think the chemistry part is as relevant to performance in action (e.g. at the board) as it is in overall dedication and lifestyle. The testosterone-driven hyper-competitiveness required to do the work and focus on such a narrow thing for so long day after day rewards men for what you might also interpret as a fault.

That is, the same obsessive/competitive characteristics are expressed in many other areas that aren't as rewarding or as respected. Comic book collecting, for example, or sports trivia. And we all know plenty of men who are as fanatically devoted to chess as most pros despite being 1000 points lower-rated. There's also a nurture aspect in that, of course, as boys are brought up to be hierarchical and competitive and girls are largely discouraged from such overtly "boyish" behavior.

Bit swamped yesterday; Garry has a speech today in Munich and a Wall Street Journal editorial appearing in both the European and US editions. And my mother-in-law is arriving today. (Hi Beth!) The epic round six podcast (video or mp3 only) is done and will be up at chessclub.com soon.

The big guns are slugging it out at last. Armenia beat Azerbaijan in round six thanks to a nice new idea in the Sicilian by Akopian, who beat Mamedyarov. Qg4-h3 is good stuff. Nyback upset Magnus Carlsen and Finland drew with Norway as a result. Kramnik beat Short with a nice game, winning with a rook and two pawns versus two knights. Short blundered with 39..c6 but it was tough to hold in any case. USA beat Cuba thanks to wins by Nakamura and Shulman. The USA women stomped the strong Romanian team 4-0 led by my Brooklyn homegirl Irina Krush. They face the still-perfect China in round seven. Rowson lost to 2272 Kajima of Japan but Scotland won the match. Interesting endgame with rook vs three connected passers. The six-man tablebases say 64.Rf2+ was the only move to draw. After missing that Rowson had to defend R vs Q, which he lost ten moves shy of the 50 move rule. Very impressive Germany again stood up to a top team, drawing with Ukraine with wins by Karjakin on one side and Fridman on the other.

In round seven the big shows are Russia-Armenia, both with 11 points, and Ukraine-China, USA-Hungary, Germany-Romania, India-France, Israel-Spain, England-Azerbaijan. That's seven games with both players 2700+! Who will wins the race for best performance rating? Live here. On-site video goodness and tidbits from Macauley in the ICC Blog. FIDE has announced the agreement for Kamsky-Topalov on Feb. 16 in Sofia. I hope so, though contracts not signed yet. As usual with FIDE, you can't believe it until the first pawn is pushed and the last toilet flushed. Olympiad r7 report here later.

Update: Armenia!! USA! Vietnam!? New Zealand?! Netherlands? Australia?? That about sums up today's highlights. Armenia took out the mighty Russian team, again thanks to their go-to guy, Sargissian. He beat Grischuk in a wonderfully complex endgame with protected passed pawns against a bishop. It looks like something Loyd would compose on the day his dog died. The other three games were drawn in this very hard-fought match, so Armenia is our first clear leader of the Open event with four rounds still to play. Back-to-back wins over Armenia and Russia thanks to Sargissian.

China-Ukraine was a four-draw split, slowing both teams. Ukraine looked to be winning on the top two boards but Ivanchuk and Karjakin couldn't finish off Wang Yue and Bu Xiangzhi. Germany is still rocking like a hurricane. Wins by Gustafsson and Baramidze compensated for Naiditsch's loss to Nisipeanu against Romania. A win by Vachier-Lagrave meant victory for France over India. Israel beat Spain 3-1 to stay in the medal hunt. The USA did the same with a big win over Hungary. Onischuk won a rook endgame against Balogh while Nakamura expertly saved one against Almasi. Kamsky looked in a spot of trouble against Leko but held neatly. Nice work, gentlemen!

Nigel Short handed Mamedyarov his second loss in a row, and did so with black in particularly violent fashion. Just 25 moves of wild-man pawn pushing and it was over. White is already in trouble, but the move 23.f4 must be put in the chess dictionary next to "lost the thread." Unfortunately for England, Howell suffered his first loss of the event to Gashimov and the match finished even. It seems like Howell declined a repetition at one point. He underestimated the power of Black's h-file infiltration and was quickly hacked to pieces by the rooks. Admittedly Howell was probably better when he rejected the repetition, but with one win already in the bag it was a debatable decision. Anyway, we can't criticize a fighter, especially one who has done very well so far in his first Olympiad.

Vietnam beat Netherlands and reminded us that they are now fielding an all-GM team. Nguyen added to van Wely's woes on board one and Le beat Smeets on the black side of a Dragon on board two. The bigger upset was New Zealand's win over Bosnia & Herzegovina. Chandler beat Nikolic and FM Stephen Lukey overcame a big rating gap and IM Stojanovic to take the match. Australia's up-and-down (under) event continued with a downer of a 4-0 pummeling at the hands of Bulgaria. Topalov won a pawn and later sacrificed a knight to win a nice game in his trademark style. Carlsen did not realize the Trompowsky is invincible and was held to a draw by Rahman. After such an amazing start Norway has come back to earth and could only draw Bangladesh. Caruana exploded Berg in spectacular fashion but Italy only drew Sweden.

The USA became the first team to slow down China in the women's event. Hou Yifan beat Krush on board one but Rohonyan got the point back on board four against Tan Zhongyi, whose game yesterday got some podcast time. The US faces top seed Russia tomorrow while seeds 2 and 3 Ukraine and China face off. If Ukraine wins they take over clear first place.

Podcast audio and video here or at ICC later.

Pairings for round eight are up. Armenia-France, Israel-German, USA-Russia, China-Vietnam, and, umm, Ukraine-New Zealand.

Forget the capital of Bulgaria and the Kamsky-Topalov match that's now scheduled to take place there. The Sofia I'm talking about is Sofi Polgar, inevitably referred to as "the middle sister," with Susan the elder and Judit the younger. I had the great fortune to work with Sofi for half a year at the KasparovChess Online office in Herzlia, Israel in 1999. A multi-talented individual who decided there was more to life than competitive chess, Sofi was/is into photography, art, and took up computer design with no fear. Now living in Toronto, she just opened up her own website, in which you'll surely find much of interest, including plenty of chess and original artworks for sale. Did you know she wrote a piece on Fischer after his death this year?

A hunky Israeli GM might also have had something to do with her gradual departure from professional chess and games like this one. Here she is with husband Yona Kosashvili in 1999 at the home of one of our KCO co-workers in 1999.

Yona has his own little bio page on the site. Somehow the results listing omits "Unofficial champion of Palestine, 1999." Long story for another day, but it has to do with a shopping trip for furniture in an Arab town that turned into an impromptu international event when we asked about chess tables.

As much as the sisters are no doubt sick of talking about their unique upbringing, I'm sure fans would appreciate Sofi's thoughts from the distance of time and now being a parent with chess kids herself. All three of the Polgar sisters turned out remarkably well-rounded and they also seem to fit a few of the usual stereotypes. The forceful eldest, the congenial middle, the golden baby. (My wife and I are both mellow second children with dominant older sisters.)

Now I definitely have to start putting together a blogroll and link list.

Big guns are matching up big time after the off day and the Bermuda party hangover recovery period. The six teams with 9/10 points meet: Russia-England, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Ukraine-Germany. In the women's event, China with a perfect 10 faces the only team with 9, Hungary. China hasn't lost a game yet despite leaving several of the world's top-rated women at home. England's Dagne Ciuksyte is 5/5 in the women's and Valentin Iotov has 5/5 for Bulgaria. Live games online. 25-minute (!) Round 5 podcast video or just audio.

The planned off-day meetings in Dresden between the camps of World Championship candidates Veselin Topalov and Gata Kamsky seem to have borne some fruit, according to Chessdom on the scene. Apparently they have agreed to play in Sofia, Bulgaria. No word yet if this is going to take place on the original schedule FIDE wanted (starting in 10 days!) or, more likely, the revised February schedule proposed by the Bulgarian federation. Updates later.

Macauley sacrificed his off day (but we hope not the Bermuda party) and staked out the scene for a few hours to bring back this epic report. The money quote, literally:

After the meeting I spoke to several attendees. "Everything is going in a good way," said Mr. Makropoulos, who also confirmed that an agreement had been reached. Gelfer and Mazouz immediately began drafting, not just a FIDE statement (to be published tonight or tomorrow morning), but contracts for the match itself, which are to be signed as soon as they have been checked and approved by both players.

Neither Kamsky nor Danailov would comment, having been expressly told not to speak to the media until after an official statement by FIDE is released. However, a few salient details are now known.

Independent sources in the meeting confirmed that the match will be held in Sofia, Bulgaria, in early February. The precise dates are not yet available [Update: Unconfirmed dates are February 16-28, which would seem to require Topalov to withdraw from Linares], and the precise timing proved to be one of the main stumbling blocks to an agreement. Kamsky is scheduled to play in the Corus tournament in Wijk aan Zee, from January 17 to February 1. Topalov is scheduled to play in Linares from February 18 to March 8. (Unlike previous years the 2009 Linares tournament is to be held entirely in Spain). The Bulgarian Chess Federation had proposed, in another open letter to the FIDE President, that the Kamsky-Topalov match be organized from February 3 to 15, 2009, putting it dangerously close to the dates of these two Grand Slam tournaments.

Danailov would not confirm how this situation has been resolved, but when asked whether Topalov has a contract with Linares to play, he replied, "Yes. So what?" He declined to say definitively whether this would or would not pose a problem.

Despite this potential conflict, there appear to have been no further obstacles to the match, according to those present. Said another attendee, "I was really surprised how smoothly everything went. It was very cooperative from both sides," adding, "I really didn't expect such a very high level from both sides."

Gelfer confirmed that it is expected that contracts will be signed this evening. "Everything is being taken care of to the satisfaction and with the agreement of both players," he said.

[Emphasis in the original.] So what, indeed? Contracts are for the little people. Well that's good news, though it's a shame it's going to mess with one or both of their schedules for 2009 thanks to all these delays. A good trivia mind-bender would be "when was the last time a FIDE event took place on the originally announced dates?" I suppose the myriad junior events aren't this bad. Glad to see that Chernenko character got the boot. We have enough of our own shifty-eyed scam artists in the chess world, thank you very much. Has the Linares field been announced, btw? Various players keep mentioning it, but I haven't seen a list.

Germany holds off Russia to keep a piece of the leaderboard, which is once again a mob scene. The four-draw split on the first table between The home team and the top seed meant there are no more perfect scores. Germany and Russia are now joined by today's winners Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and England with 9/10 match points. England has pulled off this feat despite two losses by top board Mickey Adams by beating seeds 50, 32, 109, and 44 and drawing with 19th seed Norway. The easy ride ends in Wednesday's round six when they face Russia.

Once again, ignore the PGN archive on the official site. Most of the scores I checked are wrong. The live scores look pretty good, at least for the top boards. Ooh, I do love serendipity. This just in from the organizers in Dresden:

Over 510 linked chess boards live on the internet - for the first time in history, all games of the chess Olympiad could be followed from the beginning without any problems. Michael Breidung, head of IT at the Chess Olympiad and of the Eigenbetrieb IT of the city of Dresden says: "We are very proud of this achievement. The Chess Olympiad in Dresden has the highest number of chess players, the highest number of boards, and still the equipment worked on a high level." During the first hour there were over one million views. On the first day 32 million file downloads were counted. 22 million times the chess boards were looked on, and 10 million times the homepage was retrieved. On the second and also on the third day there were over 60 million file downloads. The peak was between 7 and 8 pm.

Sigh. See my recent post on the Liverpool tournament regarding the hash these press releases inevitably make when discussing views and downloads (by which they must mean hits, which is actually technically close to accurate, if misleading in the vernacular). But this is better than most. For live viewing with every board counted as a page view, 50,000 visitors can easily rack up a million views in an hour. And I do agree that the IT has been solid. That means the hardware, of course. As for the site... Navigation was confusing in every language, there were broken links all over the place at the start and the gamescores are still a disaster. Pats to the hardware people, smacks to the web designers, and kicks in the nuts to whoever is in charge of the scores and the PGN archives.

Anyway, back to the chess, at least as far as we can make it out. I thought Russia might rest Kramnik, but he was ready to defend his Petroff against Naiditsch, who battered it with a nice novelty in Dortmund a few months ago. Morozevich pressed a rook endgame against my ICC Chess.FM homeboy Jan Gustafsson for a long time but eventually had to give up the ghost. Nicely done by Germany, I must say. I really thought they were going to get rolled today. Ivanchuk needed 127 moves but he finally brought home the point against Peter Leko and the match against Hungary. Great work from Ivanchuk, though it required some help from Leko in the bitter end. Even a technical master like Leko couldn't handle having to make only moves for so long with just a 30-second increment. Hell on the nerves. 124.Rf8 is the only move to hold the draw, sez Fritz. That win tipped the balance since Almasi beat Eljanov and Karjakin beat Polgar, who just hasn't been playing enough since her second child was born to back up her 2700 rating.

Azerbaijan finally turned the Norwegian coach back into a pumpkin. Wins by Mammadov and Gashimov were enough even with Radjabov chickening out of the expected board one matchup against Carlsen. Mamedyarov did well in the role and Kasparov said he was likely winning at several points. Perhaps knowing the match was already decided influenced his decision to take a draw, or at least interfered with his concentration. Another underdog, Netherlands, also had its piñata punctured by a top dog, in this case Armenia. Sargissian's win over Stellwagen was the decider. (26.Rxc5!) England beat Italy 2.5-1.5 despite Adams becoming the victim of Fabiano Caruana's third straight victory after starting with two losses. It's not often you see Mickey lose with his beloved Tarrasch against the French. Short and again Howell came to the rescue with wins. Short has 3.5/4 and Howell has won four in a row after an initial draw.

India duly dispatched overmatched Austria and most of the other mismatches went to the favorites. Scotland took 1.5 away from mighty China, only Shaw losing to Wang Hao. Not saying that it happened in that match, which was a good effort by the Scots, but there is little doubt that when a match win is secured with a draw your motivation for playing for a win is going to drop. Especially if there is any risk of a loss by playing on.

Ukraine-Germany 1 and the regional grudge match Azerbaijan-Armenian are the other highlights of round six. Speaking of regional grudges, USA-Cuba is another good one. Anybody still pissed off for Spain-Philippines? Finland-Norway must have a few partisans, too. Rwanda-Liechtenstein? Tomorrow, Tuesday is a rest day. Podcast coming up later tonight tomorrow. Check out Macauley and the ICC blog from Dresden, meanwhile. Update your predictions, if you like. Biggest surprise so far?

Podcast with animated diagrams and round wrap-up here.

There are only two perfect scores left in the Dresden Olympiad. One is no surprise, the top-seeded Russians. Kramnik has looked rocky on board one and they've won a few matches by the minimum, but they keep winning. The other is the home team, Germany 1, with some serious home mojo working so far. That mojo will be severely tested in tomorrow's fifth round when they face Russia. Today Russia squeaked past India 2.5-1.5 and Kramnik was in trouble with white against Sasikiran, who decided to force a repetition draw in time trouble instead of playing for a win by grabbing the b-pawn. Harikrishna exploded Svidler's Grunfeld in just the way the Grunfeld gets exploded occasionally. The spectacular rook sac 25.Rxe6!! wins instantly. Black gets mated if he takes the rook and in the game f7 is just too weak. Svidler resigned on move 27. Unfortunately for India, losses on the lower two boards cost them the match. Tough to match up when Morozevich is lurking on board four, yeesh.

Germany stayed perfect thanks to Naiditsch's third win. He beat Shirov on the black side of the Berlin defense. The heavyweight matchup of the round was Ukraine-Armenia, a battle between the last two gold medal winners. Ivanchuk netted an exchange against Aronian but couldn't convert. The other three boards also ended in draws. So two more perfect scores disappeared. Can I mention again how much I dislike the change to match scoring from board scoring? It's so conservative it's just painful. There's so little movement in the standings and if you fall off the pace it takes forever to get into the mix. We're used to seeing the cream rise (and the curds fall) fairly quickly. Here it is the fifth round and we're still seeing 4-0 wipeouts against teams with one GM, if that, by the top teams. Silly.

Cinderella team Norway continued to impress, this time drawing with England. Magnus Carlsen beat Mickey Adams on board one with a little help. White had pressure, but he would have a lot of work to do after 43..Rb4 or 43..Rc7. Howell saved the match for England with a win. They join the big pack of teams with 7/8, including Hungary, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Netherlands, and Armenia. Radjabov and Mamedyarov beat Kamsky and Nakamura, respectively, to put a big dent in the Americans' hopes to repeat as medal winners. Onischuk was finally held to a draw after starting with three wins. China bounced back by stomping FYROM 4-0.

Fabiano Caruana beat Korchnoi in rather brutal fashion. There was already no love lost by Viktor the Terrible toward Caruana after the teenager blitzed him from an inferior position at the "Rising Stars vs Veterans" event this year. Of course Korchnoi isn't shy about sharing such feelings after a loss and being cursed out by him is almost a rite of passage. Veselin Topalov and Bulgaria are trying to work their way back up after a slow start by beating Mongolia.

In the Women's event they are also down to two perfect score, Poland and China. They will meet in the fifth round. India surprised host Germany with a 3-1 win. A shout-out to Rusa Goletiani of the US, who has a 4/4 score.

Apart from the key Germany 1 - Russia matchup, some round five highlights: Armenia-Netherlands, Hungary-Ukraine, Norway-Azerbaijan (a Dragon on board 1?). The unbalanced pairings continue elsewhere with China-Scotland, England-Italy, and India-Austria. Something is just wrong when we have teams that have barely faced any GMs, let alone defeated any, on the top boards in the fifth round. Not blaming the teams and players, of course. Austria lost to Norway in round one and then beat Jordan, Sri Lanka, and Turkmenistan, who have no GMs among them.

Podcast with animated diagrams and a few game comments here on ICC Chess.FM. Don't miss Macauley Peterson's Olympiad blog with video and more direct from Dresden. Live games at the official site. Don't bother downloading the PGN archive from the official site, btw. So far they have been full of completely wrong scores. Stick with TWIC, where poor Mark is battling to get them from the live broadcast and verify them.

You might want to think twice before buying that new BMW. Apparently the legendary German efficiency is just a legend, at least if you can judge from the mess that is the official Dresden Olympiad website. The round three games ended hours ago and there's still no way to be sure who won the important Georgia-Ukraine match, for example. There are two completely different scores for Jobava-Ivanchuk, two different results for Volokitin-Arutinian, the same score for two different games, and two different results for the match. All on the same site! The scores in the PGN file now at TWIC and the one on the official site are often totally different. (Ivanchuk game, Caruana game.) Yes, this happens in just about every Olympiad, but that is no excuse. We are supposed to learn from our mistakes. Large craniums, opposable thumbs, you know the deal. From the way the results and games are coming out of Dresden you would have a pretty good argument against Darwin. I mean, what is this, Bavaria?!

The Chess-Results site is usually the savior in these events, and the Dresden site imports their pages in several places. Right now its says Ukraine beat Georgia thanks to Volokitin's win on board four. They even have the r4 pairings up with Ukraine on top with six match points, facing Armenia, so that's likely definitive. Let's hope someone is actually collecting the scoresheets. Pathetic to have such a mess even on the top boards of one of our premier events.

Even if we can't trust all the games and results, some of them seem clear enough to talk about. Just take them with a grain of salt. Russia finally got the big red Elo machine rolling and stomped Cuba 3.5-0.5 after squeaking by in the first two rounds. Kramnik drew with Dominguez while Svidler, Morozevich, and Jakovenko won. Moro's win is a classic in his style. One improbable move after another. The various outsiders who made it to 2/2 were duly crushed by favorites today. El Salvador, Malta, Faroe Islands, Malaysia, and Japan got the stomping that used to occur in the first round back when they didn't use accelerated pairings and match scoring. I believe those five teams scored a total of two points from their 20 games. Japan did get a win when 2100 Sano Tomu beat a Romanian GM on board four.

The biggest news was Norway's upset win over defending silver medalists and third seed China. And Magnus Carlsen didn't even win! No lie! I mean, yes Lie! That's Norwegian GM Kjetil Lie, who beat Bu Xiangzhi in the only decisive game of the match. Great sharp play from the winner. Hero of the Day for sure, and 19 seed Norway is one of the nine remaining teams with perfect 3/3 match scores. Self-proclaimed King's Indian basher Loek van Wely got another chance to show his stuff against Teimour Radjabov in the Netherlands-Azerbaijan matchup. The last three times the Dutchman has had white against Radjabov all ended up the same: "E97, 0-1". This time was different, however, and van Wely scored a critical win that drew the match. Radjabov's knight sacrifice on move 19 just didn't work, perhaps because van Wely had seen it before, eight years ago when Degraeve tried it against him. More in a bit, plus podcast.

Round 3 podcast here, now in Flash with a few diagrams.

Still in progress. Curiously, all four games on the first table, Poland-Russia, are still in progress when most of the day's games are finished. Probably not due to tension over the missile defense shield. All four games are up in the air. Btw, if you are watching at the official site, you can toggle between the single-game viewer and all four tiny boards of a match by just clicking the board. Of the completed matches, favorites China, Armenia, and Azerbaijan scored 3-1 over Belarus, Moldova, and Slovakia, respectively. Nice win by Ivanchuk with the cool 25.Bf5! More later, plus podcast.

Update: ICC Chess.FM podcast for round 2 now up here. Results, some on-site tidbits culled from the web and email, Hero of the Day, etc. 19 minutes. 4.3mb MP3. Right-click and save file locally for best results.

Thus continues the latest FIDE tragi-comedy, performed as a series of open letters and memoranda, of arranging the Kamsky-Topalov candidates match. The latest came yesterday from Gata Kamsky's manager, Oleksandr Chernenko, sent from a confidence-inspiring gmail account:

I was asked several times from several sides to give my point of view regarding the financing of the match Kamsky-Topalov from my side. It is especially topical after FIDE's letters of November 06 and November 07 blaming me that I lied about availability of funds for the match Kamsky-Topalov in city Lviv in Ukraine.

I don't want to blame anybody but I would like to explain why the announced amount of USD 935 thousand (including FIDE charges) was not transferred to the FIDE account. At first my sponsors and then I promised to do it, several times. I will explain now why it has not yet happened (the same situation will be with sponsors from the Bulgaria side). The money was and is available now.

The main reason is that FIDE did not present the necessary contracts beforehand: for the match Kamsky-Topalov and for match Anand-Kramnik. We asked about it dozen times. The position of FIDE, money first, is not acceptable for us. We don't know what kind of "tricks" can be contained in these contracts. As soon as the money will be on FIDE's account we could not change any issues, and FIDE will push on us to sign the proposed variant.

I see only one way out: conditional transfer. As soon as the contracts will be looked through, and as soon as the contract will be acceptable for everybody (Topalov, Kamsky, FIDE) and will be signed, only after that the money will be lodged to FIDE account.

I will be present at the FIDE Congress as the Manager of GM Gata Kamsky and as a sponsor also. I think we will find a solution to the main issue, and the match will definitely take place. I still hope that will happen in Ukraine (city Lviv). The time that is proposed by the Bulgarian Chess Federation is acceptable.

[Italics in the original.] Putting the money in escrow is totally normal and I don't see why this couldn't have been suggested and done many months ago if this weren't another delaying tactic. Who are these sponsors? What contracts is he talking about? Player contracts? Those should be for the players to deal with and treated as a separate issue. Or is Chernenko saying he won't follow through with the sponsorship until he sees what's in the player contracts? Obviously the sponsors should have their own contracts with FIDE about what the money is for and what their obligations are. That is, you don't wire FIDE nearly a million dollars if they can do whatever they want with it.

What happens if against all probability he does show up with all this money after missing all the deadlines? Ah the chess world, always entertaining and with more clowns than Ringling Brothers. Tune in next week when it turns out all the money was in a failed Ukrainian bank or Lehman Brothers stock.

So are they going to forfeit 100 people today or what? Or has that insane rule been altered? I agree one hour is weird for a professional sport, but 15 minutes for courtesy and confusion seems reasonable. Official site still not showing any sign of where to go for live games, which start at 1500 local, 9am EST. [Live game links are here. h/t evanhaut.] The ICC will be showing around 44 games live per day, mostly top teams and top players. I'll be doing podcast wrap-ups each day with occasional guests. I'm sure Ilyumzhinov will be crushed (not literally this time) to learn he missed cheerleaders and a Freddie Mercury impersonator at the opening ceremony. Update later. Post your best links.

Aronian-Caruana and Svidler-Korchnoi to start things off with a bang. USA gets Iceland and it looks like Nakamura gets rested. Remember, only five players for the four boards this year. -- Hmm, 9:05 and no moves yet. I can only assume all 1350+ players have been forfeited. -- Hey, moves! Caruana is the latest mortal to scoff at Aronian's prep in the Anti-Moscow Semi-Slav. On the official site you can only see one large board at a time and then you have to go back and choose another one, etc. If you click the bold live link above the other four on each pairing you'll get all four (tiny) boards. The Chessdom guys are doing some crazy constant posting here.

Update: Will somebody please finally confirm what's going on with the no-show rule? Are they sticking with forfeiting anyone not at the board at the start of the round? -- According to several people on the scene, they are sticking with the rule but aren't going to enforce it until round three. A few players were warned today. Place your bets now how many scandals there will be. If they forfeit someone on one of the top teams there will be noise.

Update: Susan Polgar is in Dresden and kindly posted her photo gallery links from the opening ceremony and round one. Thanks Susan! Any chance you can sneak in a few games for the US?! ChessBase has photos as well. Unsurprisingly, almost all of attractive female players, but at least they went with the strongest ones. In a few days they'll be trolling the lower tables for babes as usual. You can see the results and pairings easier at the Chess Results page instead of seeing their data crammed into the frame at the official site. You can see all the teams, all the players in order by rating, etc. Always nice. Round 2 pairings here.

If you've been feeling depressed and are looking for that last thing to tip you over into suicidal, you must check out today's "Chess Olympiad TV" at the official site. You have to download and install a client, but it doesn't take long and it's well worth it. Just the other day I was complaining about the dearth of ice-skating Freddie Mercury impersonators singing "We Will Rock You." Sweet lord almighty that's scary. On the other hand, many people in Europe think the Eurovision Song Contest is actually music, so there you go.

I'm doing podcasts after each round for ICC Chess.FM. I'll be tossing in a few diagrams and such in later editions, but I haven't slept in 36 hours so tough. That's also my excuse for why this first one is barely coherent, even for me. It's more like German opera than German chess. I promise I'll be perkier and much more succinct for the rest. Here's round one in a 5mb MP3. Link will probably change later, fyi. Depending on how your browser is configured, you probably just want to right-click it and download the file. Actually it's a rambling mess, so you probably don't. But if you do.

Check out the Ninja message boards for Russianbear's translation of Yuri Vasiliev's Sport Express interview with Kramnik, which took place in Bonn after the match. (Please reference and link when you steal it.) Some highlights:

Kramnik: At this time, Anand is the model of preparation, he is the best in the world! And when two equally matched opponents face off, that becomes a decisive factor.

Vasiliev: In game 10, when the game was waged on "your territory", it appeared that Anand didn't stand a chance. Was it not possible to pick variations like that from the very beginning- variations where the struggle is based around tiny nuances?

That was the whole thing: the opponent didn't me allow to do that, thanks to his preparation that was the most ingenious. A match is a fight between two concepts. We have completely different styles. In that particular game I managed to drag him into the territory where he wasn't that strong. And indeed, I outplayed him rather easily. But his preparation was great and he purposefully imposed his style upon me.

You've said you are going to change your game. Does that mean you are going to make your repertoire with black more aggressive?

In general I don't think I have some sort of game problems. I need to change my preparation approach. It is in that respect that I am behind Anand, and perhaps, behind Topalov, too. I don't have a team that works constantly. There is a need to create it. This is exactly what I am going to work on. If I am successful at that, I am sure I will be on the very top again.

Well, you are not giving up hopes to regain the title, are you?

I am not old yet. Anand and Ivanchuk will be 40 soon, but the game is at the very highest level. I still have time. I am sure I haven't shown all of my potential in this match and I expect to enter the struggle for the world championship title again.

I'm a little concerned for Kramnik hearing him blame the match loss solely on being out-prepared. Sure the Meran work by Anand was great, but it's what the Meran represents that was the bigger problem. Kramnik was okay in those openings, but he got completely outplayed in the complex positions that resulted. You can't always control what type of game you're going to get. This is why I called attention to his loss to Morozevich at the Tal Memorial a few weeks before the match. Kramnik again looked confused in a sharp position with an open king.

Kasparov discusses this in his upcoming New In Chess article on the match, drawing the parallel to how Kramnik got him to fight on uncomfortable turf in 2000. With so many aggressive sharp young players on the scene now it's hard to imagine Kramnik staying "at the very top" unless he works on this aspect of his chess instead of trying only to avoid it.