So, what part of the journey were we on when I got sidetracked? Oh, ok, the return to reality with the loss against the Faroe Islands.

All of a sudden, the aura of ‘invincibility’ that I was convinced I had somehow developed was shattered (come to think of it’ I misplaced my sunshades before that game, maybe he saw the ‘nervousness’ in my eyes? hmm…). Whatever.

Now, I was back to my normal relaxed mood, after all, there was no ‘imagined pressure’ from dreams of glory and success. I was back to my regular tournament mode; blitz, vodka and general socializing… (y’all get the drift…, digressing as usual, I remember on the way from Moscow to Elista, as we sat in the plane I was reading a novel and a conversation started with the person seated next to me who happened to be an Isreali GM, he asked how come I was reading a novel and not a Chess book and I replied; “I belong to the cheerleading support team, I’m here to applaud good moves”. That’s always been me - never serious ). The next game I played was against Jersey and it was an interesting win for me (I converted my opponent to the ’sunshades attack’ because he told me afterwards that my ‘bones’ were so dark and intimidating, he felt ‘I could see into his mind from behind the shades’! heh, heh…, tricks of the trade).

After that game, my team captain called me aside and showed me a list of the top performers at the Olympiad so far on the second board, which I was registered on. To my surprise, with my score of 75% (four wins and a draw from six games), I was squarely in contention for a top three finish from 140 second board participants! The GM from Armenia was leading the table with 80% while I was joint second/third with an IM from Lithuania. The next four positions were occupied by GM’s from Russia, England, etc.

Wow!

Now, the rules for the Olympiad are, to qualify for an individual medal on your registered board, you have to play a certain percentage of the overall games (60/70%, maybe…). For the Elista Olympiad, the no. of games required for a medal on the top four boards was a minimum of eight games. Things were getting interesting once more. In effect, if I could play and win two more games, I would: 1. have played the minimum required to win a medal, and 2. push my percentage score up to 82.2…% (6.5 points from 8). Then obviously, it would be up to the other players in and around the top positions to also win their games and improve their percentages.

Like Arnold, ‘I was back’.

Part 6 coming up soon.

Ha! Got y’all! I bet you’d thought I’d forgotten about the ‘path to Olympic glory’ right?

Well, for the record; I’m like the Elephant - I never forget (that’s the gist about elephants being able to remember things for like a gazillion years).

Anyway, ‘the path to Olympic Gold: pt.5′ will be up in a few hours. See y’all shortly.

You know, just flashed into my head that a lot of people out there probably don’t even know what the concept of an Olympiad/Olympic Gold Medal is, much less one for an achievement in the game of Chess.

At the biennial World Chess Olympiad, approximately 145 (one hundred and fourty five) Nations present male and/or female National Chess teams to participate in the Olympiad in whatever host country has been delegated to host the event (this year it’s in Dresden, Germany, sometime in the third quarter of the year).

The male teams are normally made up of the top rated six players in the individual Nation and they play at the Olympiad on four active boards with two reserve boards (every match between Nations is four against four). The female teams consist of four players (three active and one reserve board).

Generally, the event is normally a twelve or thirteen round tournament, following a league format with a ’swiss’ pairing system. In a nutshell, at the beginning of the event, participating countries are divided into two groups, the highest ranked Nations (based on cumulative individual rating points of National participants) are placed in the ‘upper group’ while the other half or ‘lower group’ of Nations take the other side. The two groups are then matched against each other, after the first round, the same division occurs to make the pairings for the second round (based now on total points achieved per round) and so on and so forth.

The event is scored both on an individual and group basis. And so for example; the player participating on the ‘first board’ plays a certain number of games, with this he/she has a chance to win a Medal based on ‘individual percentage scores’ while the total points of all the played boards at the end of the event will indicate the ’overall winner Nation’.

A rather simplistic overview, I know, but at least this might assist somewhat in a definition of a ‘Chess Olympic Gold Medal’. Not an easy feat I tell you, be it ‘individual’ or ‘overall’, that’s why I laugh with utter amusement at some Chess players who seem to think that there is a ‘tree’ called ‘the Chess Olympiad’ and it is possible to ’pick’ one of the ‘Medals’ that grow off it. Ah, these Chess enthusiasts

Ok, second round, up against Ecuador. A good win for me in a complicated position, but there was something interesting during the game. Walking around inbetween my moves as I am normally wont to do, I remember running into my opponent from the first game, the GM. We had actually become like ‘friends’ sort of, anyway, we ran into each other inbetween moves in our respective games and after saying ‘hellos’ he asked if I wanted to have alook at his game - I think he had just played a novelty. Me, have a look at a GM’s game (?) Wow! Third round, an IM from the UAE, another tense victory. The fourth round, a Bolivian FM and by this time I was really in the zone. My first three games ever in the World Chess Olympiad and I had 2.5 points from 3. The game was tough but I managed to play some really good chess and pull off the win. The Olympiad was really becoming a party. 3.5pts from 4 games.

Meanwhile inbetween the chess games (one 7hr game a day) there was plenty of socializing, vodka drinking, exploration of new territory and general good times, who says chess players are all about boring stuff?

Then, all of a sudden, there were rumours of a possible Medal winning performance in our chess camp, apparently there was a chance of actually winning an Olympic Medal. hmm…. Now this was all news to me, I came to the Olympiad to play chess and have fun, suddenly there was this weight of expectation from a possible achievement (!) The result? I started to take the games seriously and as always happens; “the best laid plans…”, and disaster struck! Having performed effortlessly in the first four games against titled higher ranked players, I was up against a player from the Faroe Islands that I was higher rated than. Well…, so what did I do? I started by looking for games played by my opponent (which I hadn’t done for others in the previous rounds) and generally putting myself under all sorts of tension. The result was predictable. I had a better position on the board, chances to win and I threw everything away. I guess the moral of this story is: “don’t put your hand in the finger”.

C y’all in pt 5.   

That memorable first game in Elista. I was playing against the GM Sergei Movsesian, rated 2650 and ranked in the top 20 Chess players in the world (Chess world …). Then, I was already a FIDE titled player (FM), but a lowly rated (2285) FM from the unknown primitive Chess world of Africa.

Imagine the drama then, when after just 18 moves or so, I played some move that was not in the ‘Chess books’ and offered a draw! My opponent looked at me, expressing puzzlement and said something in some foreign language. Not to be deterred, I repeated my draw offer. He then called his team captain who was standing nearby and said something to him. They both looked at me with amazement, sure that the words of english they heard coming from me could not be correct. At this point an arbiter was called over as there was something of a stir. So, the arbiter asked me; yes, is there any problem sir? I explained that I had simply made a draw offer and was repeating the same. The arbiter then translated to a language my opponents were comfortable with at which point the player and the captain looked at each other and shared a chuckle. The impertinence of this upstart Nigerian! To offer a draw to one of the highest rated Grand Masters of Chess in the world! What an insult! Suffice to say, my offer was refused and the game continued with my dark skin having changed complexion to a shade of red. Angry not embarassed red. Game on!

Some 22 odd moves later, having performed a very creditable ‘da si ruff’ operation on the board, I was suddenly in a much better position on the chess board; possibly winning even! The next thing, my opponent did a long think, made a move and offered me a draw! Heh heh. If it was in the movies, I would probably have started yelling: “so who’s the man now? thought you were tough hunh? who’s the man?…”.

But seeing as we were in the civilized (!) setting of the chess scene, I decided to exact a more subtle revenge. At this point I decided to call my team captain over as well as the arbiter to explain to me what my opponent was trying to say

Anyway, after letting him stew in the pot for a few minutes while I stood and contemplated his fate I graciously accepted his gentle request for a draw. (who says I’m not a good guy?). Off to a flying start at the Olympiad, my first game ever at the world stage and a share of the spoils with one of the best?, where was Kasparov? My fingers were itching for targets.

pt 4. shortly.   

Nb: funny enough, as a ref to the above game; the official recording of this game in the FIDE database truncates on MY move so it indicates that the game ended when I made a draw offer. Strange. There is also a misrecording around the 30th move that loses an officer for me two moves later to a Knight fork. Ah well, mistakes happen every day - “na so we see am”.

Where were we? Ok, at the airport in Lagos.

First off, I have to mention the intense rivalry that exists amongst all Chess players, and particularly so in the Nigerian Chess scene. There is a palpable sense of pride in being able to tell your friend in Chess; “na me be your oga!…”. This was the kind of background to the ’minor bet’ at the airport on our way to the Olympiad in Russia. Now, I had played on the second board (rank ‘2′ from 6 boards) at the African Team Championships the previous year in Cairo (as a ’sacrificial lamb’ in my opinion, since it was my first international event and there were higher ranked players in the team) and I had beaten the odds by putting in a Bronze Medal winning performance. So I was hoping that at the Olympiad, I would be placed in my ‘appropriate’ rank which would have been third or fourth board as far as I was concerned. But, as usual, I was informed that I would be taking the second board (at the airport). Taking the placement with my usual philosophical aplomb and a dash of bravura, I declared that I would put in a very worthy performance on that second board (bring on the GrandMasters and InternationalMasters!). Somehow, the then Chairman of the Nigeria Chess Federation was not impressed by my bragging and he wagered me a ‘minor bet’ that I would not make the grade. I’ve always loved a challenge! I declared that I would make at least a 50% score in my games at the Olympiad. Little did I know that fate had much more than I could ever have hoped for in store for me.

So, off the team went; Lagos - Bruxelles - Moscow - Elista.

The Chess City of Elista. I refuse to digress and begin to talk to infinity about experiences outside the Chess, I will only try and talk about the games and drama that led to the Gold Medal for now. Well, just one memory that refuses to go away. On our way to dinner on one of the nights of the Olympiad (before the start? during the games? can’t remember.) my friend Dapsy and I were met by an old woman and she gave each of us these metal badges. They depicted heroes form Kalmyk folklore. I particularly remember mine, the badge showed a picture of a warrior carrying a horse aloft! The inscription was “Dzangar Canal Ckonem” or something like that (cyrillic characters I assume, I’ve spelled approx in english). Talk about a good omen!

Anyway, after several shots of Vodka and some blitz with the local guru (Mr. Kozak, I want a rematch), it was time to play Chess.

Round 1 was spectacular, the stuff movies are made of. Pairing: Czechslovakia vs Nigeria. Four Incredibly highly rated eastern European GrandMasters of Chess vs a bunch of ‘token participants’ from Nigeria, Africa even, wow! Easy result right? Well. things somehow didn’t go according to ’script’ for the super powers. Halfway through the first round and it looked like the Nigerians were about to make Olympiad history, we were better (winning?) on three out of four boards! Drama!

Pt 3 coming up.    

Olympic. The Olympics. The World Chess Olympiad.

What is this ‘Olympic’ hullabaloo anyway?

According to wikipedia: “An Olympiad is a period of four years, associated with the Olympic Games of Classical Greece. In the Hellenistic period, beginning with Ephorus, Olympiads were used as a calendar epoch. In this reckoning, the first Olympiad lasted from the summer of 776 BC to that of 772 BC. By extrapolation, the 4th year of the 696th Olympiad begins in summer 2008.”

What has happened in modern times is that we Chess folk (weird lot, I agree) have decided to stage our own ‘World Chess Olympiad’ in the spirit of the ’Olympic’ games but we decided to adopt a biennial convention (every two years I presume?). I think we just had to do something different since the Olympic people (IOC) didn’t seem to want us in their games All this is my opinion so pls no outraged screams and yells from the wiseasses out there. I think there’s actually something going on about integrating Chess into the main Olympic Games but that’s a story for another day.

I ‘wobbled and fumbled’ (proudly and originally Nigerian quote) my way to a Gold Medal at the 33rd Chess Olympiad in Elista in 1998 and I’d like to share the many travails and bumps on that long and rocky (but infinitely memorable) road. Ah, the memories are starting to flow already. Weightlifting, pushups, endurance training, stamina training, the works (who says Chess players are wimps?), where were all the title holders? Ali, Tyson, I was ready!

Hey, hang on a minute, I’m talking about Chess right? I digress too much, I was remembering my run to the world heavyweight title

‘The path to Olympic Gold’ will start soon, from a minor bet at the Murtala Mohamed International Airport, Lagos, on an evening in September 1998 (October? kai!, old age is bad for the grey cells).

See you all in pt 2.