Women Zatonskih wins in 14 moves! The women really need a big win.
It looks like the women will win, but not by a big enough margin. The Open team looks like it is doing fine, and may finally put an end to its streak of drawn matches.
Women ahead 3-0 with Krush still playing.
Open section 2.5-.5 ove Turkey with Kamsky still playing.
The women are heading towards a 4-0 win after two of their opponents blundered. The Open team will probably give up only one draw. Things are getting better for both teams.
Women win 4-0 over Belgium. They needed that.
Open wins 3.5-.5 over Turkey. That helps a lot.
A good round for the US, all the way around. Unfortunately, I had to actually work at work today, so I wasn’t able to keep an eye on the games.
I actually didn’t like this pairing for the men today. I figured Turkey would be motivated by playing at home and all. It’s a great result.
Offhand thought of the day: what would it take to get Fabiano Caruana to switch back to USA affiliation? (I know, it’s not going to happen…but just imagine what our men’s team would look like.)
The women’s result, frankly, would’ve been disappointing if it wasn’t 4-0. They need a very similar result next round. I’m hoping they can get inside the top 10 with such a result, which gives them chances in the last three rounds to produce a little closing magic.
I think they can make a push, but I wonder how tired Krush and Zatonskih are going to be by the end. They can’t miss another round the rest of the way. Krush has a perfect individual score so far, but as the team runs up against tougher competition during its (hoped-for) rally, it may not be reasonable to expect her to maintain that pace. Goletiani, Abrahamyan and Foisor need to take some heat off the two leaders.
Hoping for more good news tomorrow… 
The games were quite interesting. Robson used a cute two knights perpetual check when it appeared that his oponent might be getting out of the pressure from a typical …Rxc3 exchange sac. Kamsky’s play against the doubled c-pawns as black in a Nimzo-Indian was textbook stuff. I really enjoyed his …e5…e4 break, exploiting white’s poorly placed king on f2.
Then there was Nakamura - who smothered mated his opponent with the shot 31.Qe6 checkmate. I was watching the game online and assumed that Nakamura’s plan was to play Bg6 and win the f7 pawn, but it took me awhile to see that black doesn’t have time to consolidate with …Qb5 because of 31.Qe6 mate - apparently Nakamura’s GM opponent had a similar blind spot; in that case, white has gained just the tempo he needs - 30…Rd6 31.Bg6 and the f-pawn falls and white penetrates big time. I thought maybe black earlier should have gone in for …Rxh5 and after gxh5 tried to use the g-file for counterplay. Still, it’s hard to give white an outside passed pawn on h5.
The game that really left an impression on me was Onishuk’s strangulation of GM Esen. At the end of the game, white had his choice of multiple pretty wins - I was fooling around with the idea of Qf5+/Qf4+/Bg4+ at a point where when black plays …Nxg4 white has the in-between move Rd7 (which is why the queen has to vacate e5 and check via f4) and it’s all over. Of course, the pesky computer points out various easier ways - I hate computers. Interestingly, Onishuk’s 41.c7, which was good enough to force resignation, also wasn’t the quickest forced mate. Whatever.
That said, it just didn’t seem like black was going to have that hard a time until Onishuk hit on the idea of Bd1-f3 and putting the knight on c6. Earlier, though, it sure seemed that black was a little too obliging on the queenside with …a5, which took away any chance of activity associated with …b5 and left black to a passive defense. I guess black thought he could lock up the queenside and relocate his king there and hold the blocked position - and he likely could have if he were playing somebody like me rather than a FIDE 2666 GM.
All in all, a nice victory. I wonder if we will end up playing one of the Biggies next round - if they are pairing in common match score groups by game scores, then Russia and China on board 1 and Azerbaijan is paired up to play Ukraine. Then the US would be the top of the remaining group with 11 match points (other than Azerbaijan). You might think we’d thus luck out with a pairing against a less elite team, but it might not be so simple. If you just paired the rest of the group as 1-5/2-6/3-7/4-8 on games won, the US would match up with Germany - but since we’ve already played, that wouldn’t work. In that case, the next 2 that might ‘fall’ to the US are Armenia and Hungary - the number 3 and 4 seeds.
Of course, that assumes they use games won as the seeding method in groups with the same match score. If they use avance seeding, then Russian and Armenia Ukraine should play on Board 1, China should get the top seeded from the next group, which is the number 3 seed Armenia. Then the seeds line up as Number 4 Hungary against number 14 German, number 5 US versus number 33 Uzbekistan, number 7 Azerbaijan against number 33 Phillipines, etc.
If Azerbaijan ends up having to play number 1 seed Russia and number 2 seed Ukraine in back to back rounds, I would vote them hard luck team of the tournament - of course, they’re also a darn good team capable of beating/drawing any team.
Rd 8 pairings are up already:
Men’s team plays FYROM (Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia)
Women’s team plays Philippines.
Which shows how little I know about pairing.
The open team will be 100-250 points higher rated than the FYROM team.
The women will be similarly higher rated than the Phillippines team.
Both need a decisive result here.
Women are paired with balck, open with black as well. (So boards 1 and 3 are black, 2 and 4 are white.)
I think I saw the pairings are first on match poiints, Bucholz then game points. But I’m not certain that is the order they are following - and colors should still come into play even though it means less in a team match.
These are exceptionally easy pairings for the US teams. We will out-rate them by hundreds of points on every board. It could be 4-0 sweeps for each team.
I presume the other teams will face similar “opposition”
FYROM is a good team that has already beaten Latvia, Austria, and Italy. 3-1 would be an outstanding result for the USA in round 8.
Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Hungary have been playing on adjacent boards: pairings are likely in the final three rounds. (Play chess, not war.)
On the men’s side, FYROM’s first board, Georgiev is having a tough time, having lost 3 games so far (granted, two of the losses to Leko and Caruana and he did draw with Shirov). The rest of the team is over-peforming, ratings wise. Really only one ‘up and coming’ player - IM Pancevski is 24. The rest of the team is in mid to late 30s and 40s.
Hard to say. We’re playing the 49th seed. We’ve beaten up on seeds 58, 67 and 82 at the start (3.5 or 4 of 4). Then we hit a lull of scoring 2 of 4 from seeds 13, 14, 17. We just had our most impressive victory, scoring 3.5 from the number 31 seed. If we keep to that level of performance, 3 or more is certainly possible.
It would help if Akobian gets into better form . . .
I wonder how many of the international correspondents outside of those from the UK and USA are familiar with the colloquialism “Bunny-bashing”. 
Krush currently has the Women’s Board 2 top Performance rating with her 6-0 start, although if/when she’s held to a draw that will bring her back to the peloton. Zatonskih won the gold medal for Board 2 in 2008, but she did have to face high-rated opponents from the top seeds along the way.
IMO, the USA Women caught a big break when the Belgian team gave their top player (a WGM) her first rest, requiring a WFM to play on top board.
It sure didn’t hurt the US team when the Belgian lineup changed.
Women about to go up 2-0
Abrahamyan wins on board 4 with white. Krush is way ahead on board 2 with white.
Zatonskih ahead on board 1 with black.
Open match pretty even getting close to first time control. Nakamura sitting out this round.