Chess Olympiad 2012 Round 4 Results for Team Philippines

Team Philippines incurred its first team loss (and even its first player loss) in the fourth round in the ongoing Istanbul 2012 World Chess Cup, against one of the toughest teams -- the 3rd seed, in fact -- Armenia.

Team Armenia is of course headed by the current second highest ELO rated player in the person of Levon Aronian.

The final tally: Philippines is 1.5 as against Armenia's 2.5, as Oliver Dimakiling bowed to Gabriel Sargissian in Board 4, while the rest of the boards were draws:

Bo.	Team Philippines	Rating	Result	Team Armenia	Rating
1	Wesley So	2652	1/2-1/2	Levon Aronian	2816
2	Oliver Barbosa	2554	1/2-1/2	Sergei Movsesian	2698
3	Mark Paragua	2508	1/2-1/2	Vladimir Akopian	2687
4	Oliver Dimakiling	2428	0-1	Gabriel Sargissian	2693

Although a loss, I'd say it was a decent loss, and the team did really fought a good game. After all, they came clearly as the underdog, a 35th seed up against the 3rd seed, before the start of the round.

You can replay the games from these pages:

• Wesley So vs. Levon Aronian [Chess Olympiad 2012] [R4]


• Sergei Movsesian vs. Oliver Barbosa [Chess Olympiad 2012] [R4]


• Mark Paragua vs. Vladimir Akopian [Chess Olympiad 2012] [R4]


• Gabriel Sargissian vs. Oliver Dimakiling [Chess Olympiad 2012] [R4]

Download the PGN: Philippines vs. Armenia Round 4 Istanbul 2012 World Chess Olympiad.

Updates

After four rounds, Team Philippines is ranked no. 20.

In the fifth round, Team Philippines will be up against the 51st seed Iceland, who shares the same standings with 3 wins and 1 loss (0 draws).

Check out Team Iceland Profile.

Team Philippines (Open) Round 3 Results in Istanbul 2012 World Chess Cup

After beating Kazakhstan 4 games to nil in the third round of the Istanbul 2012 World Chess Olympiad, the Philippine team is now ranked 8th overall.



Check out the games at the links below:

• Rinat Jumabayev vs. Wesley So


• Oliver Barbosa vs. Anuar Ismagambetov


• Petr Kostenko vs. Mark Paragua


• Oliver Dimakiling vs. Kirill Kuderinov

Download PGN of the games.

In the fourth round later, Team Philippines will up against Armenia and one of the members of the 2800 club, Levon Aronian.

All I can say is Good Luck guys, go for the win, not just a draw.

The Polgar Family

No doubt the Polgar Family of 3 women chess players and their remarkable achievements could now be considered as one of the pillars of the great and rich history of chess.

Recently, ChessBase reported:

For four years, an Israeli film-maker has collected archive material never seen before, and produced a documentary for Israeli TV that is epic and historic, but also personal and intimate.

And here's the trailer to the documentary film:



We, chess fans, are absolutely thrilled to watch the full video.

Philippines Ranked No. 36 at the Start of Istanbul 2012 World Chess Olympiad

Chessdom managed to rank the countries according to the ratings of their respective participants based on the August 2012 official FIDE ratings list.



Team Philippines, led by GM Wesley So (ELO 2652), has an average ELO rating of 2546 and is running 36th place based on the above criteria before the start of the tournament.

Check out the full list here.

By the way, Wilson's favorite country, Australia, is ranked 60th in the same list with an average rating of 2423.

We'll surely watch out for the tournament results as they happen to check how the actual rankings will pan out in the end.

Why Not ChessCube?

As you read through this blog, you might notice that I'm not so fond of Chesscube.



You know why? Because it's so full of Flash. And you know what Steve Jobs has to say about Flash:

• It is proprietary;


• It has security problems and is the number one cause for Mac crashes;


• Flash is a battery hog which doesn’t work well with mobile devices;


• Use HTML5 instead.

And if you have kept up with the news lately, Adobe has removed Flash for Android from Google Play.

Now, have you seen a Chesscube app in the iTunes App Store or Google Play? There's none, because they can't do it.

That's why I'm using an internet chess server like FICS for online play and Chess.com for correspondence chess.

Hiarcs' Mac Chess Explorer is Now Available

Got a message today that Hiarcs' Mac Chess Explorer is finally available:



At last, after a very long wait, it has finally come for us to check out.

It comes bundled with Hiarcs 14 and costs US$59.95 for the single-core version, and US$99.95 for the Deep Hiarcs (multi-core/multi-processor version).

By the way, there's also the PC Chess Explorer. But what the heck, we're only interested in Mac here, right?

World Chess Olympiad 2012 Android and iOS Apps

Great news! The 2012 Istanbul World Chess Olympiad now has an official mobile apps for both the Android and iOS platforms.

Basically, the following are available in the app:

• Results;


• News and Announcements;


• Schedule;


• Photo Gallery;


• Venue; and


• Contacts.

The official games start on Tuesday, 28th August 2012. We'll try our best to bring you here at ChessHive the results of our own Team Philippines.

You can grab your own copy of the app for free from the Google Play and/or the iTunes App Store.