NICK BARNETT CHESS

THE CHESS OLYMPIAD For individuals participating in the 43rd Chess Olympiad in Batumi Georgia, the waiting period until the 23rd September, must be the nail biting. Of course they will be busy travelling there, getting acclimatized and participating in the official and extra-mural activities that this biannual event offers, but still they will be anticipating the competition with trepidation. Our players going there are: Cawdery Daniel (2422), Watu Kobese (2344), Calvin Klaasen (2262), Johannes Mabusela (2245), Donovan Van den Heever (2227) as well as Jesse February (1933), Anzel Laubscher (1797), Denise Bouah (1780), Rebecca Selkirk (1733) and Charlize Van Zyl (1664). They are lucky to have Aleksa Strikovic (2481) along as coach. Striković (born 12 May 1961) is a Serbian chess grandmaster who won the FR Yugoslavia Chess Championship in 1992, and the South African Open in 2016. The strongest teams are USA (2777) Russia (2767) and China (2485). A trivial fact: there are 8 countries (including Mozambique) which rate under 1300. • The USA team has Fabiano Caruana Fabiano (2822), Wesley So (2780), Hikaru Nakamura (2777), Samuel Shankland (2727) and Robson Ray Shankland (2670). Their womens’ team has: Anna Zatonskihn (2431), Irina Krush (2429), Tatev Abrahamyan (2361), Jennifer Yu (2327), Sabina-francesca Foisor (2311). • The Russians are sending Vladimir Kramnik (2779), Sergey Karjakin (2773), Ian Nepomniachtchi (2768), Dmitry Jakovenko (2748), Nikita Vitiugov (2730) and the female contingent: Alexandra Kosteniuk (2559), Aleksandra Goryachkina (2535) Valentina Gunina (2528), Natalija Pogonina (2469), Olga Girya (2462). • The Chinese team includes: Liren Ding (2797) Yangyi Yu (2760) Yi Wei (2735), Chao Li (2714), Xiangzhi Bu (2712) and with Hou Yifan (2658) not playing, the top women are Ju Wenjun (2566), Tingjie Lei (2471), Yang Shen (2458), Qian Huang (2445), Mo Zhai (2341). We are all holding our thumbs that our team will improve its overall rating and that all the individual will move up in the ranks. POLITICS For the chess politicians the election of the new FIDE President is the most important event. For the last year the ‘twar’ that played out on Twitter, has been extreme with accusations of corruption and insults flying back and forth among the candidates: Nigel Short, Arkady Dvorkovich and Georgios Makropoulos. Nigel Short is very outspoken in a recent podcast Interview about his candidacy for FIDE President (online and on Youtube) and one can get his views about the other two. Another, somewhat less antagonistic way of assessing the candidates is to see what they say, is on Youtube. Stephen Sakhur interviewed Arkady Dvorkovich BBC Hardtalk on the 10th of September interrogating in his inimitable way, the motivations of someone who had been the deputy president of Russia, now going for the position of FIDE president! Georgios Makropoulos is not that accessible except for a rather hagiographic interview by the Batumi organisers, but it is telling in itself.