Wednesday 9 November 2011

A team of champions or a champion team?

The European Teams Championship is once again demonstrating that a team of champions isn't always equal the sum of their parts. The Russian team is again finding it hard going in a teams event, tied for 11th place after 6 rounds of the 9 round event. They are not alone in under-performing, with second seeded Ukraine tied for 15th place.
On the other hand the Romanian team are a full 16 places ahead of their seeding, currently sharing first place with Azerbaijan and Bulgaria. Round 7 sees them in with a chance to hang on to the lead as they are downfloated to play Germany, while Bulgaria and Azerbaijan battle each other. Lurking in the wings is the always dangerous Armenia, who bounced back from an early loss to Azerbaijan to sit a point back from the leaders.
I'd normally mention live coverage etc at this point of the post, but apparently their have been problems with the game transmission and records. A lot of the coverage I've seen have warned that the game score may not be accurate, especially where double blunders seems to have occurred, or a player has resigned for no reason.

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