2 1/2-- 1 1/2
That may be enough to win gold as the Ukraine has already drawn one game. It does not appear that 3.5 for Ukraine would push the tie breaks high enough to overcome the US Open team. Ukraine open is 1.5 out of 2 completed so far.
US Women having a tough match against India. they needed a sweep and help to medal I think. with board 1 already drawn and at least one other looking like a loss that probably knocks out the women from medal contention. But I think they have had a good event nonetheless.
Ukraine open may well win 3.5-.5, 1 game better than US. will US tie breaks hold for gold? I can’t figure it out - have to get ready for work.
But I think it will be good enough at first glance
Eljanov-Beliavsky looks drawish to this patzer.
It did to me too, but Eljanov won.
You were right about Hansen-Shankland (although I got the other three boards right).
Reportedly Eljanov won—though final position per chess24 still drawish
US ahead on TB as of now
It is up on the official site.
Open team wins gold on tie break. They were ahead of Ukraine 18.5 points on the tie break going into round 11 and finished ahead by 9.
Women finish 6th - right at their starting ranking. Big news on the women’s side was the great result of the Polish team starting at 17 and finishing 2nd.
Only 2 teams did not lose a match in the Open section - the US at 9-2-0 and Greece at 4-7-0.
On the women’s side only China did not lose a match with a final score of 9-2-0.
When was the last time we won Gold?
Alex Relyea
1976?
Mr. Priest is correct.
The US men’s team last won gold at the Haifa Olympiad in 1976. That particular event was missing a lot of heavyweight Eastern Bloc teams, most notably USSR.
I was watching on chess24, and when they posted 1-0 on the Eljanov win I thought ‘no way’ - that position is certainly not resignable. However, they provided additional moves later, and when Big Al resigned, he was definitely lost.
Ukraine received good results from almost all of their opponents. They finished 9 TB points back and would have gained 3.5 more if Albania won and 2.5 more if India had won (with the US also increasing by 0.5). With a max tie-break gain Ukraine would have still been 2.5 TB points back.
The US can be glad that their earlier opponents also won. Losses by Scotland and either Argentina or Serbia would have given Ukraine the gold. For that matter a loss by Scotland and India beating Norway would have left the first tie-break identical (with the US have one half more game points to win the second tie-break). Ukraine had a 153 to 152 edge on the third tie-break.
If all of the other matches had gone poorly for the US (low odds, but theoretically possible) then Ukraine would have had a 12.5 tiebreak edge at the end.
With pretty much the same actual results the third tie-break could have come into play with a 4-0 Ukraine win, India beating Norway, and either Russia or Georgia only tying in round 11 (Ukraine would have been better by 153 to 151.5).
Life would have been so much easier if head to head was the first tiebreak!
The SB tiebreaks are fairer. One team could have a weak “Swiss Gambit” start and only catch the other team with a last-round win. That win will obviously help tiebreaks, but msy not be enough.
The Swiss System is necessarily a form of rough justice. It’s not as apparent this year because both Ukraine and USA had great results against killer opposition & were clearly superior to the field.
It is a good point that the US and Ukraine were clearly the two best teams. Ukraine beat Russia - and the US probably should have except for a brutally bad endgame by Robson. The US beat Ukraine. The rest of the way, the two pretty much ‘held serve’ with each other.
On the US side, Caruana and So’s performances were noteworthy. Given that ‘the big three’ are all young players with many good years to go, (and that applies to Robson and Shankland as well - plus lots of young players coming up to challenge them), I suspect that the US team will be a medal winner/contender for many Olympiads to come.
Maybe the S-B tiebreaks are fairer, but it bears noting that if Germany had played worse then Ukraine would have walked away with the gold. It eventually came down to whether or not German GM Matthias Bluebaum could defeat Estonian IM Tarvo Seaman. He did, so we got the gold. Had Bluebaum lost or drawn, Ukraine would have.
This is so because of the provision that they drop the lowest score. Ukraine beat Germany 2.5-1.5, but they beat Jordan 4-0. If Germany had not won against Estonia then they would have been the lowest scoring team that Ukraine had faced. As it was Jordan had that distinction, and was the one dropped. With Germany out of Ukraine’s field of opponents and Jordan in the Ukrainian team would have edged the US by 2 tiebreak points.
I’m not entirely convinced that having the awarding of the gold medal hinge on a board #3 game between two middle of the pack teams is better than using head-to-head as the first tiebreaker.
Sure, but suggesting the result came down to that one result is a logical fallacy - the difference between the US and the Ukraine on tiebreaks wasn’t based on one single result, it was based on 11 rounds of results from two teams against 11 other teams. These things, based on combined results, are a combination of possibilities. Short of some sort of play-off of the teams, you will never get around this sort of second guessing.
In typical “Ugly American” style, we can say we won and Ukraine lost. Let them complain about the unfairness of the tiebreaks. 
On a geopolitical level, it would have been better for Ukraine to win as that would have ticked off the Russians and Putin far more given the recent hostilities between the two nations. The rivalry in chess between Ukraine and Mother Russia has a long history.
We don’t need a play-off here. We already played the team we ended up tied with. Or do you think we should play them again?
The only really fair way to determine a champion is to have an all-play-all round robin. Since that is logistically impossible here we have to settle for the least bad tiebreak option, which I think is head-to-head, with S-B next in the queue. Head-to-head has the not inconsiderable advantage of being easy to explain. Try explaining the permutations of the S-B system to someone who is not mathematically inclined. In a video on the ChessBase website the US Captain, IM John Donaldson, was explaining the scenario I referenced earlier to interviewer GM Danny King. King got confused. If it confuses him, how well do you think the average Joe is going to understand it?
There is one more advantage to head-to-head; it is completely transparent. It involves only the teams actually tied with each other. There is little room for external manipulation…Suppose it had been Russia we were tied with after 10 rounds, not Ukraine, certainly not a far-fetched possibility. Suppose also that it was not Germany we needed to win in round 11, but Belarus. Do you think there is any chance that Putin would have asked his friends in Belarus to “ask” their players not to try too hard in round 11? Maybe that would never happen, but with head-to-head the scenario could never arise.