Clash of the titans

WHO do you think would win if a match were to be played today between Russia and China? Russia is, of course, the traditional chess powerhouse of the world, while China is the top chess-playing country in Asia.

If the top 10 players in each country are taken as the basis of comparison, the Russian men leads their Chinese counterparts by 89 rating points today. And if a comparison is made of their women chess players, the difference is even smaller: a mere 11 points separate the 10 best players from both sides.

Therefore, a match between these two chess superpowers would make a very good reason to determine which country is superior.

And actually, there is such a match going on today. It is the seventh such encounter between the two countries but it did not start out as an annual match because after the first one was played in Shanghai in 2001, there was a three-year gap before the second match was organised in Moscow in 2004.

After that, the chess federations of the two countries thought it best to have an annual match and so, Argun in Russia was the host in 2006, followed by the fourth match in Nizhni Novgorod in 2007, Ningbo in China in 2008, and last year’s match in Sochi, Russia.

Tough opponent: Wang Hao, China’s chess champion.

This year’s match is taking place today in Yinzhou, Ninbo in China. It started on Aug 4 and will end this Sunday. Each side is fielding five men’s players and five women’s players.

The match comprises a Scheveningen-style of team event where the members of each team will play the members of the opposing team once at normal time controls, followed by rapidchess games and finally, a series of blitz games. Of course, to ensure an even playing field, the men are competing among themselves only and likewise, the women are playing among themselves, too.

In the first round, the China men’s team won with a 3-2 score but the Russian women won 3½-1½. In the second round, the Russian men were almost whitewashed when China won by 4½-½. However, the women’s teams fought to a 2½-2½ draw. In the third round, Russia and China tied at 2½-2½ in both the men’s and women’s contests.

The fourth round saw the men drawing on all the boards, while the Russian women edged out their Chinese opponents by a 3-2 margin. In the fifth, both the Chinese men’s and women’s sides won by 3-2.

The final score at the end of the normal time control games on Tuesday was 27 points to the China team and 23 points to Russia.

The Chinese men’s team could take credit that they did not lose any of the rounds. At their worst, they drew the third round but at their best, they almost totally blanked out the Russian men in the second round.

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