There have been quit a few significant events in the chess world in past few days, several of them not having to do with the off the board GM dust-up that will surely be reported here in detail.

We'll start off with the chess instead. Armenia's Olympiad team didn't let down their chess-mad nation and took the gold medal by an impressive two-point margin. They were the only team that didn't lose a single match, drawing three and winning ten. This shouldn't be considered a real surprise, although it used to be generally recognized that the gold is always Russia's to lose. Armenia won the bronze in 2004, the obvious difference this year being Levon Aronian's transformation into a world-class player and a force on board one.

Having a new first board has a huge impact on a team's potency. Akopian was strong on board one for Armenia in 2004 but was devastating on board two in 2006. The Armenians didn't lose a single game in the final eight rounds and held on to their big lead with eight draws at the end. First reserve Gabriel Sargissian exemplified the curious strategy employed by the winning team. They played the same four players for the last nine rounds! Lputian and Minasian were both on 2.5/3 but never played again. Sargissian's final 10/13 isn't as impressive as the amazing 8/9 he had before drawing his last four games. Going with their hot hands turned out to be more important than giving them rest.

The vagaries of the scoring system and the swiss system of pairings had a few side-effects. In the final round Armenia coasted home with four brief, prearranged draws with Hungary. The Hungarians, without Leko and Polgar, were never in contention but jumped up at the end by bashing Iceland 4-0 in round 12. A 3-1 victory over Armenia would have given Hungary a medal; a narrow win would have meant tie for third. Instead they showed all the ambition of a bowl of goulash and took the four guaranteed draws. Congratulations guys, you finished fifth. That's what, the aluminum medal? Cowardium?

From a lack of mettle back to medals of precious metal, 12th seed
China took silver while 7th seed USA got the bronze. Israel tied the US on 33 points and had the identical match score, but lost the bronze on strength of opposition tiebreaks. China took silver despite losing four matches, an achievement that must have required some serious feng shui. They lost to just about every contender they faced, in fact, falling to Russia, Armenia, USA, and France. (USA and Israel lost one match each.) China compensated by whipping weaker teams like love slaves on bondage night, scoring 3.5 four times and stomping the not-weak Georgian team 4-nil. Former world's youngest GM Bu Xiangzhi, now 21, emerged as a solid top board, winning when he was supposed to and not losing a single game. His startling 2790 performance was surpassed by the even younger Wang Yue, who fulfilled his great promise with a 10/12 score and the second-highest performance rating of the entire event, 2837. The other Chinese players were only so-so, but they didn't have to be better.

If you recall, last November China also took silver - and almost won gold - at the World Team Championship despite failing to excel against the other top teams. Such performances always lead to some fans speaking out in favor of using match points instead of board points for the primary Olympiad scoring system. Currently match points are used as second tiebreak. This makes sense because, as we'll see, match points are practically meaningless when you are pairing with board points. Using match points, Armenia still wins easily, followed by USA and Israel. Teams as far down as 30th finish higher than China. Russia also lost four matches and would have finished around 20th on match points.

The obvious problem is that when a 2.5-1.5 squeaker is worth the same as a 4-0 annihilation, the cumulative score doesn't say as much about the strength of the team. While the teams would doubtlessly play differently were the scoring system different - and much more conservatively, of course - we can see this effect by looking at the Turin scores. On match points Georgia jumps up from =11-15 to clear fourth place. Scotland had one fewer match point than China, 16, but finished in a tie for 49th-54th and lost to China 3.5-0.5 in the second round. Had the Scots eked out one more half point against Argentina in the final round they would have tied China on match points despite being a far weaker team that faced much weaker competition throughout.

Of course this is somewhat beside the point because if you are scoring by match points you are also pairing by match points and that wouldn't happen. With match point scoring teams do a lot of agreeing to draws on certain boards to give unofficial rest days and to target what they think are better match-ups. Despite the aberrations it's not as if a bunch of weak teams have snuck into the medals, either historically or this year. Super-conservative play, many more short agreed draws, and ignoring the value of a big match win is not the way to go.

Speaking of big wins, how about the bronze medal for team USA? It looked like the Americans were out of it after they lost a tough match to Israel in the 12th round. But the pairings tossed them a Viking funeral and they got Norway in the final round while rivals Russia and Israel finally faced each other and France fell to the tough Bulgarian squad. (Anyone know why there were only 13 rounds this year instead of the usual 14?) USA scored 3.5 against Norway to vault up and tie Israel. The Israelis must have thought they had a medal in the bag when they beat Russia 3-1, but - oh the tsuris! - they had underperformed for most of the event and their tiebreaks were dreck.

The real American miracle had come earlier, against France in round ten. The French were all set to administer a 3.5-0.5 blowout with one game already drawn and winning positions on the three remaining boards. Suddenly Bauer blundered into a mating net against Ibragimov and Nakamura got a miracle endgame draw against Fressinet so the American's got a 2-2 split and a huge morale boost that carried them through to the finish. (The comments made at Playchess and on the message boards during course of these games are priceless. They're up! They're down! They're up!)

Hikaru Nakamura in particular seemed charged up and the 2005 US champion put the team on his young shoulders the rest of the way, winning three straight games, including the US team's only wins in its matches with Russia and Israel. The only decisive game of the match with Russia was his win over Grischuk, in which Nakamura characteristically avoided exchanges only to head into a losing position. But as the saying goes, that was the penultimate blunder. Computer analysis is often unkind to Nakamura's risky, if not risqué, play, but his opponents find it very hard to deal with and that's what counts. From his last four Turin games you could say he was losing in two, perhaps three, with trouble in the fourth. His score from these games: 3.5/4!

American top board Gata Kamsky staggered to the finish line after a valiant marathon that started in Bulgaria. He'd already looked tired when Topalov caught him at the finish of the MTel, but unlike Topalov he came directly to Turin to take over Olympiad duties. (Four of the six MTel players did this; Topalov and Ponomariov didn't.) After a strong 4/6 start in Turin Kamsky was exhausted, but he kept going out there to make sure the US would be putting out its strongest team, making things easier on the other boards. Current US champ Alexander Onischuk surely benefited from Kamsky's presence. He was a very solid first board in Calvia in 2004 and here on board two he turned in four wins without a defeat. Let's not forget that the 2004 US team finished fourth without Kamsky or Nakamura. USA captain John Donaldson has a report here.

Dress for Success! Assaulting your opponents eyeballs is legal. Two of these were worn by top players, one by a Kalmykian dancer. To be fair, the orange on Kamsky (center) is one of the "Right Move" t-shirts handed out by the Kok campaign. With matching baseball caps, of course. Rublevsky (left) has no such excuse, unless he's representing the Hula Party.

Russia, wherefore art thou, Russia? The tip-top seed finished =6-10, and this two years after their silver medal in Calvia was considered a dramatic fall from grace. And the weak link? It certainly wasn't Vladimir Kramnik, back to the board after a half a year away to recuperate from a difficult medical condition. All he did was face the toughest opposition of any player in Turin and turn in the highest performance rating, 2847. The only sour note was his curious absence in the final round, when Russia fell to Israel 1-3 to fall off the podium. Russian champion Rublevsky turned in the only the second negative score in Russian team history. Dreev managed it in back in 1992 when the Russian team first appeared.

It could be said that Russia deserved better. They faced the strongest teams and had the second-highest performance rating as a squad. (Some stats from the Wiener-Zeitung site, others from a few of Jeff Sonas's posts to the Daily Dirt.) That's the system for you, and you can't lose ten games and expect a medal. Defending gold medal winner Ukraine also fell from grace, finishing with the same 32 points as Russia. They had the absence of Ponomariov on board two to deal with.

They could also feel better via schadenfreude by looking at what happened to the #2 seed. India crashed and burned all the way to =30-34th. Every player underperformed his rating substantially and they went with essentially a five-man team, Singh playing only in the first round (and losing). Anand won his first game after arriving from Sofia and never won again. His long string of draws ended with a sensational loss to Canadian champion Pascal Charbonneau.

Many of the top individual performances went to members of the junior set. Wang Yue, Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin, Bu Xiangzhi, and David Navara all had results worthy of top-ten players. Will that be the top ten in five years? The Czech team led by Navara had a great event but couldn't keep up the pace at the end. Uzbekistan also deserves mention as a lowly seeded team that was up near the leaders for most of the event. The young Azerbaijani team faired poorly despite a strong showing by Radjabov. They certainly would have done better with Mamedyarov on the team, but he was absent after several disputes with his federation.

As usual, the women's event was much truer to seeding than the open. (Still called the "Men's Olympiad" by some, despite at least five women participating, two of them on board one.) Ukraine's decision to put young Katerina Lahno on board two paid off when Zhukova had a great event on top board. Their reserve Ushenina played more games than anyone else on the team and went undefeated. Then came Russia and China and a huge gap down to a pack of teams that included USA, Hungary, and traditional power Georgia. Chinese reserve Hou Yifan scored 11/13. The Chinese medaled with most of their top women players not participating, a remarkable display of depth.

The coverage of the celebrations in Armenia are good for any chess fan's soul. The photos of the crowds at the airport are great. They were met by the Armenian prime minister as well as many cabinet members and military officials. "The Olympic champions then headed to the city's Freedom Square where more than a thousand people waving national red-blue-orange flags and chanting "Armenia! Armenia!" gathered to cheer them. The celebration, featuring speeches by senior officials and performances by Armenian pop singers, was broadcast live on state television."

Wow! And check out that gorgeous Soviet-era Chayka automobile. It looks like a scene out of American Graffiti on the Hrazdan. Team captain and Defense Minister Sarkisian was even nominated to head the national football federation. I didn't see Aronian in any of the team-with-flag photos in Yerevan so he may have gone directly home to Germany. Either that or the diminutive world #3 is hidden behind the flags. No matter, he played very big in Turin. His shattering win against Sokolov and his 11.Nf7!! against Navara in round eleven were worth the price of admission.