Home Chess News Gorilla Fart #7 – Round 7 Review of the Budapest Olympiad

Gorilla Fart #7 – Round 7 Review of the Budapest Olympiad

September 19, 2024

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Gorilla Fart #7 – Round 7 Review of the Budapest Olympiad

Report by – Mehul Gohil aka ‘Gorilla’

Team Kenya delivered a most essential win in Rd7 vs Kuwait. It was a must win and they did win.

On Board 1: Martin got outplayed. Kuwait’s Board 1 is a good player.

On Board 2: Kanegeni squeezed out a won position from an equal endgame in characteristic fashion. I really thought he had it in the bag. I event stopped spectating. Only to come back and find it was drawn. The extra half point would have pushed Team Kenya higher in Category D.

Board 3: Wow. Wow. Wow. I will need to dedicate special time to annotate McLigeyo’s games in depth and do them proper justice. Another fine performance. This guy is my main threat in the Kenya National Championship.

Board 4: This was a solid, professional job by Mutuge. Delivering the results in calm and solid fashion. Good stuff.

Teams at the Olympiad have bumped up in a traffic jam much earlier than expected (usually happens from Rd9). We have ‘razorblade’ thin differences between say position 98 and position 118. Just a small drop in board pts or a loss can result in huge position placement disparity.

What Team Kenya did in Rd7 was simply essential and should be applauded as a well delivered match win.

Team Kenya members from left Robert Mcligeyo, Martin Njoroge and Elvis Likoko with Nordiberk Abdusattorov the board 1 player of Uzbekistan. Photo credit Erika Sziva.

Current statistics

Let’s me review some current statistics before farting on generalities:

Team Kenya is now ranked in position 118. That is a good spot to be in approaching the finishing straight.

In Category D, Kenya has moved up to position 9. This is a good spot to be in as well. Kenya has 6 match points. The two leaders in Category D are currently Honduras and Botswana. The two have 7 match points. All the remaining up to position 15 have 6 match points. This means there is all to fight for in Category D and Team Kenya remains in contention for a podium finish.

To further elucidate how ‘razorblade’ thin margins between team positions are, Botswana is in position 98, Kenya 118…only 1pt separates them. Uganda is in position 143 being just 1pt behind kenya (it is a big humiliation for Team Matoke to be behind Kenya at this point, and it looks like their Olympiad campaign is going to the dogs).

Kenya has two players in contention to get the CM title (Mutuge and McLigeyo).

Kenya is currently ahead of the likes of Sudan and Malawi at this point…another indication how crucial Rd 7 win was.

All players in Team Kenya have a plus 1900 Elo TPR. That is GOOD to have collectively. McLigeyo of course leads with a healthy 2158 TPR.

McLigeyo has so far gained 22 Elo pts. (Winning a tournament in Kenya will get you max 20pts gain, here just at 50% score you get the same on the international stage, an indication to CK that Elos are gained out there not locally).

Moving onto generalities

Team Kenya face Jordan today. Tough team. I think Jordan’s IM on Board 2 is a really weak IM. Team Kenya will need to be wary of the Board 3 and 4 players for Jordan….despite their lower ratings they are much stronger if you look at their games. I hope Team Kenya can knock out a stronger team. That will be sensational. And rocket them up the rankings.

Best of luck to them.

Game corner

About Mehul Gohil

Mehul Gohil is the a three times Kenya National Chess Champion (2014, 2019 & 2022. He has won several major events in the country including the 66th Nairobi Chess Club Championship.