Both teams hold serve in round 1.
Open 4-0
Women 3-1
Channeling Evelyn Waugh, not exactly a Scoop.
en.chessbase.com/post/batumi-ol … on-day-one
chessdom.com/chess-olympiad-2018-live/
chess24.com/en/dashboard
chess.com/news/view/7-minut … -1st-round
Round 1
Open was a 4-0 win over Panama
Women went 3-1 over Uruguay with wins from Zatonskih, Abrahamyan and Yu
Round 2
Women take Luxemborg 4-0.
Canada is next, Canada played Uganda in Round 1. The Ugandans had Phiona Mutesi on board 1 - the subject of the Queen of Katwe book and movie.
For the open team Fabiano joined the group after some late travel and took over board 1 in round 2. The team had a bit of a struggle with the Georgia #3 team winning 2.5 -1.5 with 3 draws and only So taking a win,
The Netherlands are next. The Dutch have won both of their opening rounds 4-0.
The tournament is being played at the new Sport Palace facility. The event hotels are in downtown Batumi so there are shuttles out to the playing hall. The governance meetings are all being held at the Sheraton hotel. One needs to take the shuttle - it is about a 1.5 hour stroll out to the Sport Palace from the Sheraton. So our players won’t be strolling over to the hotel right after a game.
I can understand posting to discuss results and specific games; prospects against future opponents, but simply stating the schedule, strolling distances/times and overall results strike me as not the best use of the US Chess president’s time. All of that is quite easy to find on the Internet these days. Perhaps the time could be better spent on program development brainstorming or updating and discussing ideas other members have for growing the organization. Just a passing thought…
Brian,
This is what you complain about? Twice?
Mike
Mike, I guess my first comment mentioning Waugh was too subtle. I’ve been told before when I’ve posted readily obtainable information, that such posts do nothing to advance chess…
Yes, but you seem to spend an inordinate amount of time challenging Mr. Priest. In that context, this seems petty.
For those of us that don’t bounce to those various websites, having the information on the US Chess website is worthwhile. Some companies have very strict limitations on their internet gateway that excludes sites that are considered used for games.
Granted, that comes from somebody who was making forum posts with regular updates on Nationals or Supernationals pre-registration that included links to where people could see the numbers for themselves.
We met with Open captain John Donaldson, Hikaru and Anna after their games were complete - Jennifer was still playing. The team seems to e in good spirits - the biggest issue at this point seems to be some transportation difficulties. The shuttles don’t run as frequently as our team would like, but cabs are relatively cheap.
Since we have the posting of the round articles up and running in CLO on the front page of the website I won’t continue to post those here.
Our Congress delegation is, I believe, all here now and various commissions are meeting. we will be trying to cover most of the commissions while also meeting with the various Presidential slates, our continental officers, and other delegates and federation presidents to discuss matters of common interest as we prepare for the General Assembly.
If you click the main US Chess link on this page and then scroll down, you’ll find the latest Olympiad news there. No need for our president to spend his valuable time reinventing the wheel here.
Allen may be President but he is still an individual and should feel free to post anything he wants. (that doesn’t violate the AUG etc)
Sure, but isn’t it a good thing he has someone to manage his valuable time for him? 
No one is saying that as an individual he isn’t free to post what is already on the US Chess web site. However, he’s stated that he will stop duplicating that.
As President, it remains to be seen how effectively he uses his time and energy to grow chess and the organization. Does he have the leadership skills to do that? The jury is still out on that. Time will tell.
We’ll have a report on the commission meetings and such soon. Those are really just getting going.
Meanwhile not a bad day in the two matches.
thanks for the updates, Allen.
cheers, …scot…
Wow aren’t our women doing well? They seemed to be in good spirits yesterday - I’m certain they are even better today. I talked to several of our open team yesterday and both team captains and they seem content with the housing and food situations. Transport can be an issue as the shuttles only run when the bus gets full. But while it is along walk from the event arena to the hotels it is a short cab ride, and the cab rides all seem to cost 5 Lari which translates to about $2.
The rest of our Congress delegation has made it in. Tony Rich was the last to arrive I believe. Walter Brown’s commission work will be done this weekend and he will actually head back home. Neither Carol nor I got to the playing hall today - and I don’t think Ruth, Michael, Grant, Steve or Sophia did either. The commission meetings started in earnest with Marketing, Events and the first session of Ethics all today. The commission meetings are very much like our workshops at the annual delegates meeting.
Event sis working on cleaning up some event regulations but no substantive changes. They are trying to avoid duplication with event rules that are already codified in other documents. There is a move to make a separate set of event standards for senior events which focus on the need to have different conditions like shorter distances to playing facilities and such in recognition of certain additional challenges we face as we age. One of the biggest items there is that the 2019 World Cadet is not yet scheduled but has been tentatively awarded to China. The Chinese would like to hold the event in July-August because that is when they are out of school. That event has more generally been held in the fall but some of those dates have been in conflict with the beginning of school. So they wanted the summer to enhance their local attendance and to seemed like it might work a bit better for our players. but there could be issues with not just our continental Pan Am Youth championship but also some other continental youth championships. IT would be direct conflict with the European youth continental championship which is the first week of August each year. Those issues still have to eb resolved.
The campaigns of Dvorkovich and Makros squared off in the Ethics Commission today. Makros has filed a series of cases against either the Dvorkovich campaign directly or against national federations that he claims have been bribed or have been involved in other inappropriate behavior in support of Dvorkovich. The two tickets four years ago also filed cross ethics claims alleging each had done similar things and these cases were not decided until after the election was over. This Ethics chairman was determined to hear this first case against he Serbian Federation. Makros is attempting to have that Federation disqualified from voting - the Serbs have come out in support of Dvorkovich. The Ethics Commission spent all afternoon in closed session hearing the case and we did not wait around to hear any final result.
Makros is also attempting to have 3-4 other national federations disqualified form voting. One of those is Israel. HE is also attempting to have the entire candidacy of Dvorkovich disqualified.
we have meet with both sides more than once. We are committed to vote for Short’s ticket as long as he is in the race. If he drops out either before voting, or in a second round, then we will be faced as to what to do. The vote is secret, so we can vote without making a public statement of support. Both of the main candidates are trying to win on the first ballot. IF no one receives a majority on the first ballot then the third place is dropped and a second ballot is taken with the remaining two candidates.
We have been very clear in what we want to achieve. We want US representatives on key commissions so that we can watch out for our players, arbiters, organizers, and national interests. We want people in those places also so that we can share our expertise and indeed learn from others in those areas. All candidates have talked about implementing major reforms for FIDE and we think we can help. Some of those are very practical - for example we have, I think, 1 arbiter on staff here. WE should have far more because we certainly have qualified folks to do it. Some of the arbiters appear to be very good, but other? Well for example one yesterday declared that since a match had reached 75 moves it was declared a draw (the rule is 75 moves without a pawn move or capture - but not 75 total moves in the game). I have a long discussion with Malcolm Pein about that very issue which is clearly something he is interested in changing.
There is much still to do. The Ethics Commission situation could cause a massive disruption in the electoral process. IF Dvorkovich is ruled against, we know that he is already prepared to file an appeal before CAS in Switzerland. There is all sorts of speculation, and all sorts of scenarios being discussed. More will become clearer as we move forward.
US Chess will make no decisions about what course to take without consultation with the full EB. We are having ongoing discussions as developments occur.
Saturday is a rest day for the tournaments but a full day of governance activities. The weather has been in the 60s and rainy/cloudy but things are to warm up and clear over the weekend. The tourist season is winding down but we are right on the Black Sea beach and when the weather ahs been warmer there are still swimmers getting a last chance to meet the water. The beach is not sandy - all rocks. At some point we hope to have dinner with our teams, and that may be tomorrow. Thank you for all of your support and well wishes for your players, and thanks for your thought and support of your Congress team.
Edit - corrected rule comment - thanks Alex
US women are paired for Round 6 against India which has the top game points in the 9 match point score group. The rest of the 9 point score group includes Georgia 1 and Georgia 2. Georgia has 3 teams in each of the sections.
The open team has the lowest game points in the 9 match point score group and is paired down against Bosnia from the 8 point group. Bosnia starting rank was 56 so I expect they will be excited to take on the US.
In the 10MP score group Azerbaijan takes on the Czechs while Poland tackles Ukraine. The two other 9 MP teams are paired with Israel against Germany.
Sunday should be interesting!
Just for the sake of completeness, the US Chess rule and the FIDE rule are both the same. Either player can claim a draw after 50 moves without a capture or pawn move. The TD or Arbiter can claim after 75 moves without a capture or pawn move. The referenced arbiter was wrong in any case.
Alex Relyea
Of course you are correct. Sorry it’s late here.
I suspect the arbiter in question had read the 4th edition (1994) of the U.S. Chess rulebook and had dropped the digit 1 from his memory of it. 
In that edition, there was a 175-move rule. It stated that, in any game with a 5-second delay in effect, the game was an automatic draw after 175 moves.
The rule probably came about because one of the authors of that edition was apparently afraid that, with this new-fangled 5-second delay thingie, a game could theoretically go on forever.
The rulebook revision committee for the subsequent 5th (2003) edition decided there was no need for that rule, as nobody on the committee had ever seen it used, and it was dropped.
Bill Smythe