Jim McTigue won again today. It was a very smooth victory. As an interested observer I was also much happier with his time management today. That's steadily been getting better, and I think he's now finally settled in. Unfortunately, the team lost 1.5-2.5 again, and again at one point they were poised to do a little better. C'est la vie.
Tomorrow the Virgin Island team is paired against Djibouti, and I expect them to win. Djibouti had problems with their travel arrangements (many of the African countries did), and wasn't able to play until Round Six. (Hopefully they didn't miss the Bermuda Party, too.) Djibouti only has three players on their team, so they will be starting down one point to start the match. Of their three players, only one is rated - the second board sports a 1502 FIDE. Hopefully "our" guys will crash through to a good match victory tomorrow.
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In other news, Russia smashed Czechia (don't blame me, it's what they call themselves now for marketing purposes) 3.5 to 0.5, and the US team beat the now former tournament leader India by the same score, setting up a Russia-USA match tomorrow. (That match-up will also occur in the Women's Olympiad.) The US now has sole lead of the tournament in match points, but it didn't come as easy as the score would suggest.
Shankland was flat out dead busted, stone cold lost, buried, finished, had bought the farm, and "everything that goes with it", against S. P. Sethuraman, but he played on. To lift a Shankland quote from Chess.com's report (which I recommend be read in full), "I wanted to resign, but I didn't." Perseverance paid off, even though his opponent was rated 2640, and Shankland went on to win a game in which his evals were at least as bad as -9.5. (Shankland had White.) That game is embedded in Chess.com's report, and is yet another example of why I play on until there is no possibility of my opponent letting me back in the game, and no one I play is rated anywhere close to 2640 FIDE.
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A couple of other bits. First, Nepomniachtchi is now on 7/7, and has a performance rating over 3300. (I though they couldn't calculate those for players on perfect scores, as that's what I remember people saying from Caruana's streak in St. Louis a couple years back.) He's a very bad man in Baku, and I wouldn't want to meet him anywhere - unless I was on his team, of course.
Second, you'll need to read the bit on Nigel Short. He had "fun" with the organizers again today when they tried to inspect him for cheating in the middle of the game, in time pressure. Just read about it at Chess.com. Unbelievable, and one can't help but wonder if he didn't get singled out for this because of his well-known and long-running stance against FIDE.
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