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Eighth Round: The See-Saw Ride of Iran and Russia Continues! |
 Today it was Russia's turn to go up in the see-saw. The leader, Iran, managed to beat Azerbaijan 2,5-1,5 but it wasn't enough to cling to their place at the peak as Russia steamrolled over Australia-A with 3-1 to reach the same game points as Iran but due to better tie breaks Russia takes the first place. Iran has to fare better than Russia in the next round to take the driving seat again, we'll see if they can do it once more or not.
The third seed India moved back to its original position with a 3-1 win against Armenia so the starting order is restored yet again. In another interesting clash Lithuania beat Peru 2,5-1,5 and once again Peru's points came from its talented girls, the locomotives of the Peruvian team! The Australian girls of the Australia-B, another team with the same gender composition as Peru, were less lucky however in the match against Denmark as young Danes proved themselves to be cruel enough to destroy their female opponents on the board.
Looking down the list the ties in matches between Slovakia A-Kazakhstan and Poland-Turkey Red catch one's attention. The trend of Turkmenistan either winning 4-0 or losing wasn't disrupted at this round too, this time it was the latter one against Czech Republic. Georgia demolished Turkey Turkuaz with 4-0 and also South Africa-A and Slovakia-B got 4-0 against their opponents, Kyrgyzstan and Iraq respectively. It was a good day for South Africa since the B team also won against Sweden, despite Ina Kraemer's yet another win for Sweden. She is one to watch out and is one of the top performers on the fourth board after Mousavi from Iran, Perverdiyev from Azerbaijan and WFM Felix Vega from Peru.
The ninth round will be played today at 16.30 and of course most of the attention will be on the top two match-ups of the round, Iran-Lithuania and Georgia-Russia. As the end is getting near, it only gets more and more exciting! |
