Chess Olympiad: Bronze for India after revised standings

Viswanathan Anand has always maintained that winning a medal in the Chess Olympiad is like winning a lottery. The five-time world champion, who has never made a secret of his dislike for the format and consciously stayed away from the biennial event since 2006, holds the opinion that unless you do very well in the last three rounds, a podium finish is not possible.

Indeed, this time India did well in the last three rounds and built on the good work of the earlier rounds. India drew the ninth round and won the last two. As a result, India moved from the 11th spot after eight rounds to the third spot in final standings.

In fact, the revisions of the final standings — twice under two hours — confused those following the thrilling finale online in real-time.

After four nations — India, Hungary, Russia and Azerbaijan — tied for the second spot with 17 match-points each, the website placed India behind Hungary and champion China.

India’s tie-break score as per the Sonneborn-Berger system (which adds up the aggregate score of all the players of team that lost to India and half the aggregate score with whom it drew) was shown as 374.5 to Hungary’s 375.5.

Minutes later, much to the delight of the Indian fans, the country’s tally was raised to 382 thereby placing India in the silver-medal winning position. However, close to two hours after the final round, India’s figure was revised again. The confirmed final tally for India stood at 371.5 to Hungary’s 372!

For many online followers, especially those from Hungary, the silver medal to the European nation meant a fine farewell to Judit Polgar, arguably the greatest women’s chess player in history. The Hungarian had announced her decision to retire from professional chess the previous day.

On the brighter side, for the first time two Asian nations found a place on the podium of the biggest chess congregation where everyone, barring Anand, from the list of the world top-10 player participated.

Like the last edition, India returned with two individual board prizes, one in each section. After Padmini Rout ensured the gold for the reserve player in the women’s section, K. Sasikiran’s last-round victory fetched silver from the third board of the Open category.

Statistically, out of 44 games, the Indian men won 19, lost just two and drew the rest for a truly splendid show spread over 11 rounds.