Carl Ja­cobs

T&T got off to a fair start af­ter the first three rounds of the 41st Chess Olympiad now in progress in the scenic city of Trom­so, Nor­way.

In their first en­counter, our men's team suf­fered an ex­pect­ed 4-0 drub­bing from Brazil's team of grand­mas­ters, but they went on to play un­beat­en against Bhutan and to over­whelm the Sey­chelles with a per­fect score.

T&T's open­ing per­for­mance of two wins out of three placed it 76th among the Olympiad's 150 com­pet­ing coun­tries, 17 places ahead of Ja­maica and 62 above Bar­ba­dos, both scor­ing one vic­to­ry.

In the women's sec­tion, T&T opened im­pres­sive­ly, hold­ing Japan to a 2-2 draw, con­ced­ing just half a point to Lithua­nia and crush­ing Palau by four points to ze­ro. Here again, T&T forged ahead of its Caribbean ri­vals, plac­ing 67th among 136 con­test­ing na­tions in­clud­ing Ja­maica at 74 and Bar­ba­dos at 99.

Points­wise, T&T na­tion­al cham­pi­ons FM Ryan Harp­er, men, and WCM Ja­van­na Smith, women, to­geth­er with CM Joshua John­son and CM Adri­an Win­ter Atwell are lead­ing the strug­gle with two vic­to­ries each.

While T&T chess fans may be some­what heart­ened by our open­ing per­for­mance, par­tic­u­lar­ly our draw with Japan, they must al­so be aware that tougher com­pe­ti­tion in the form of IMs and GMs is yet to come in this 11-round con­test which ends on Au­gust 14.

From its gala mu­si­cal open­ing, there was re­al­ly no doubt about the star of the show. All 174 par­tic­i­pat­ing na­tions were in­tro­duced in a flag cer­e­mo­ny which fea­tured an en­thu­si­as­tic in­ter­na­tion­al wel­come for the ar­rival of the Nor­we­gian team on stage led by world cham­pi­on Mag­nus Carlsen.

Re­ceiv­ing the ac­co­lade, the 23-year-old su­per star said: "It is very spe­cial to be on home ground–and this is a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty! I have great faith in our team, and am sure that we can give any­one we meet a re­al fight."

Nor­way's Fi­nance Min­is­ter Siv Jensen in­tro­duced the start of the games with a wink to na­tion­al pride: "With Mag­nus Carlsen, world chess cham­pi­on, it is on­ly fit­ting that the Chess Olympiad is held in Nor­way and Trom­so."

In wel­com­ing the gath­er­ing, FIDE Pres­i­dent Kir­san Ilyumzhi­nov praised the nat­ur­al beau­ty of the Olympiad's set­ting.

Fur­ther to the north of an al­ready far flung des­ti­na­tion, Trom­so is known, like much of the coun­try, for its nat­ur­al beau­ty and for ex­tremes like the Mid­night Sun, the North­ern Lights and north­ern hos­pi­tal­i­ty.

The cur­rent year marks the 200th an­niver­sary of Nor­way's con­sti­tu­tion and 100th an­niver­sary of the Nor­way Chess Fed­er­a­tion. This, of­fi­cials say, is the main rea­son why Nor­way ap­plied to host this year's Olympiad.

The event has at­tract­ed a record num­ber of par­tic­i­pants, with 175 coun­tries and 3,2000 play­ers, of­fi­cials and FIDE rep­re­sen­ta­tives com­ing to Trom­so.

Like many of the heavy first round favourites, Nor­way rest­ed their top board.

With­out their cham­pi­on, how­ev­er, Nor­way al­most suf­fered a huge up­set, nar­row­ly es­cap­ing be­ing held to a 2-2 draw by lit­tle fan­cied Yemen.

Nor­way's cham­pi­on 21-year-old Frode Urkedal cre­at­ed a sec­ond round sen­sa­tion by whip­ping renowned Vass­i­ly Ivanchuk, a feat which cat­a­pult­ed the young­ster in­to the me­dia hot seat.

Mean­while, Carlsen set­tled for a tame draw against Finnish GM To­mi Ny­back.