Perhaps they are very tense with the ECU election. Perhaps it is just a coindence. But both Bulgarian Chess Queen Antoaneta Stefanova and Chess King Veselin Topalov suffered defeat today.
Topalov lost to Mark Bluvshtein of Canada while Stefanova lost to Nafisa Muminova of Uzbekistan. This once again proves that it is VERY difficult NOT to lose in the Olympiad.
Here are the top 3 players in the Men’s (Open) and Women’s Olympiad who played the most games (up to the Dresden Olympiad – Minimum 15 games) without a single loss:
Men’s (Open) Olympiad
Title – Name – Country – Total points scored – Total games played – Wins – Draws – Losses – Percentage
GM Kramnik, Vladimir RUS 32½ points 47 games (**) 18-29-0 69.1%
GM Acs, Peter HUN 13½ points 19 games 8-11-0 71.1%
IM Minić, Dragoljub YUG 14½ points 18 games 11-7-0 80.6%
Women’s Olympiad
GM Polgar, Susan (*) HUN – USA 43½ points 56 games 31-25-0 77.7%
WGM Kushnir, Alla USSR – ISR 23 points 25 games 21-4-0 92.0%
WIM Zvorykina, Kira USSR 17½ points 20 games 15-5-0 87.5%
(*) All games on board 1
(**) Kramnik played 5 games in Khanty-Mansiysk. Therefore, his unbeaten Olympiad streak is now at 52 games.
It’s almost impossible to play 50+ games without a loss.