22.July.2010: Bob Rizzo has provided his latest update of the team standings in Excel format. Bob says:

With Keith's draw vs. Romania, the US has clinched a team tie with Romania - we are the first team in the finals to earn team points (TP).  1 point is awarded for each team draw and 2 points for each team win.

The tournament is exactly 4/9's complete (44.4%) which coincidently matches our team's completion percentage.  The US continues to outperform - 40 points in excess of our expectancy.

Italy leads at plus 3 closely followed by Russia and Spain at plus 2.  Russia is the overall leader on a percentage basis with a 54.2% scoring rate.

Congrats go to Estonian IM Tonu Talpak as the first to complete his games in the OLY17F.  He scored 8.0/12 on Board 6, barely missing the GM norm (by 1/2 point).

14.July.2010: Bob Rizzo has provided his latest update of the team standings in Excel format. Bob says, "Corky scores a nice draw vs. Russia.  At present the team is performing almost 50 points higher than our expectancy.  Italy leads with plus 3 but Russia at plus 2 has a slightly higher scoring percentage having completed fewer games."

The games files on this site have been updated for Reinhart, Rizzo and Schakel.

5.July.2010: Bob Rizzo has provided his latest update of the team standings in Excel format. Bob says, "Corky earns a nice draw.  USA is 3/8's complete.  No change in the overall standings as Italy still leads at plus 3."

25.June.2010: Bob Rizzo has provided his latest update of the team standings in Excel format. Bob says, "The Italians may have been eliminated in Futbol but they are kicking butt in chess.  They are now the sole leaders at plus 3."

13.June.2010: Bob Rizzo has provided his latest update of the team standings in Excel format. Bob says, "With a little more than 1/3 of the tournament complete the overall team standings have not changed much.  Italy and Russia still lead at plus 2.  6 teams are plus, 6 teams are minus and one is even.  The attached standings do not include my Board 5 draw result vs. Papenin (UKR) as I am claiming an intention to repeat the position for a third time.  Franklin had forwarded the claim to TD Gutierrez a few days ago but it has not been officially posted as of 11PM (EDT) on June 13."

Team Captain note: The ICCF server does not automatically terminate a game unless a player agrees to a draw proposed by his opponent via the server or a player resigns via the server. Otherwise, the TD (or other appropriate official) must make a decision and manually set the result. In such cases in a team event the player must request the Team Captain to make the claim to the TD. A draw by 3-times repetition or 50-move rule is not specified within the ICCF rules. In such cases ICCF applies the FIDE Laws of Chess, as specified in ICCF rule 1a. (I have added a link above to the FIDE rules for future reference). In this specific case the FIDE rule is:

9.2 The game is drawn upon a correct claim by the player having the move, when the same position, for at least the third time (not necessarily by a repetition of moves) (a) is about to appear, if he first writes his move on his scoresheet and declares to the arbiter his intention to make this move, or (b) has just appeared, and the player claiming the draw has the move [there are some additional clarifications as to the position being "the same"].

Of course, there can be some minor differences between OTB and correspondence chess which may require some interpretation by the TD, such as "... he first writes his move on his scoresheet".

1.June.2010: Bob Rizzo has provided his latest update of the team standings in Excel format. Bob says, "The file is updated from yesterday to include Ken's draw as black vs. SIM Holger Blauhut of Norway.  Also note that I incorrectly (again) had calculated our team average rating for those games completed and came up with the erroneous 2464.  I realized today that I referenced the performance ratings instead of the USA starting ratings in some instances.  The correct number is 2433 which makes more sense when you inspect the distribution.  So that makes the team performance to date of 2472, 39 points higher than expected.  I have now added that as a last column on the spreadsheet to calculate automatically - probably not that valuable a statistic anyway."

31.May.2010: Bob Rizzo has provided his latest update of the team standings in Excel format. Bob says, "Russia still leads at plus 2 but the Toth victory has moved Switzerland also to plus 2 albeit with a slightly lower winning percentage.  Congrats to Ken Reinhart who has broken the ice for the USA with his fine win against Romania.  That result has raised our team performance to 2470 vs. an expectancy of 2464 (weighted average of our team's rating on the basis of the 24 games completed).  To put this into perspective, the average of all opposing teams in total (with USA removed) is 2547.  So it would seem that we would need a final performance of more than 109 points over our average team rating (2547 less 2438) in order to achieve a plus team score.  Ken's result marks the completion of 1/3 of our games in this event 24 down, 48 to go).  And thanks again to Franklin for his fine webpage, blog and excellent captaincy!"

29.May.2010: USA Board 3 Ken Reinhart scores first win for team! Congratulations to Ken on an excellent attacking game vs. SM Ioan Calin Chiru (Romania) to give us our first full point. The game can be viewed on the new games page for Ken. To celebrate this win I have just set up games pages for all the team members to display all our games finished so far. The Games links in the table of players above now point to our Final round games (previously they pointed to the Preliminary round games). ... Franklin

28.May.2010: Bob Rizzo has provided his latest update of the team standings in Excel format. Bob says, "31% of the games are complete.  Russia still leads at plus 2.  Board 1 has seen its first decision as Toth has beaten World Champion Oosterom.  That leaves Boards 2 and 5 without a win having been posted.  Our team is performing slightly better than our rating.   However since we are the lowest rated team we would probably need to perform at least 100 points better than our expectancy to have a chance to medal.  But there are still plenty of games remaining . . . ."

27.April.2010: Bob Rizzo has provided his latest update of the team standings in Excel format. Bob says, "All of our teammates now have completed at least one game.  As a team the only Federation with which we have not had any result is Spain.  We are performing at right about our team expectancy with just less than 1/3 of our games completed."

20.March.2010: The new USA Team 17th Olympiad Final web page was launched today. The old Preliminary Round Web Page has been preserved. The teams participating in the final are as follows, listed in order of average team rating. As the lowest rated team the USA will have a big challenge.

1. 2656 - Netherland
2. 2627 - Germany
3. 2591 - Spain
4. 2571 - Switzerland
5. 2560 - Russia
6. 2549 - Ukraine
7. 2546 - Italy
8. 2527 - Estonia
9. 2508 - Romania
10. 2489 - Denmark
11. 2489 - Norway
12. 2446 - Croatia
13. 2438 - United States

One change in the rules this time is the penalty for taking over 20 days for any one move. After 20 days have been used the player will be charged double time, 2 days for each additional day used. See rule 6c. in the Playing Rules. The server sends an email warning and displays the player's remaining time in a yellow mustard color.