Ziaur Rahman Drew Magnus Carlsen in 7th Round of Chess Olympiad

This is my pleasure to state that Bangladesh Men Chess Olympiad team has drew the very strong Norway team in the 7th round in Dresden, Germany yesterday. It's an amazing feat for Bangladesh chess team considering the strength of the opposition in the world chess map. I congratulate the team wholeheartedly. Go to http://www.dresden2008.org/site/de/medien/ausblick08/main.htm and search for Bangladesh to see the results so far for Bangladesh Chess Team. Bangladesh is ranked 55th at the start of the tournament is standing at 37th place after 7 rounds.

From Chess For You

While the whole team is playing very well, it's worth mentioning separately that today GM Ziaur Rahman at top board drew with White against world's 4th top rated (2786) GM Magnus Carlsen who is widely considered as the future World Chess Champion who is looking forward to break Kasparov's record of being the youngest world chess champion of all time unless Anand can refrain him from being so for next four years. Also GM Rakib's current rating performance is an impressive 2646 (4.0 out of 5 games). I wish Bangladesh can end up within a position within the first 40 teams in this tournaments and each of the players gain a very good rating point out of this.

Here is what The Round 7 News by Mark Crowther of ChessCenter mentioned about Zia and his game against Carlsen.

Carlsen (with black) against Ziaur Rahman (a man who plays a LOT of chess, believe me, so is extremely experienced) drew after provoking complications not in his favour from the opening but eventually reached a dead level ending after his opponent went wrong.

You can follow the full game here in chess.com forum.

Bangladesh Chess Olympiad Team 2008

Chess Olympiad Dresden 2008 has achieved the highest level of registration in history turning it into the biggest Chess Olympiad of all ages. After the final closing of the registration list on September the 19th there were more than 2000 active participants announced. It will be held from November the 12th till November the 25th in Dresden, Germany. A perfect place to play big chess events after a successful world chess championship match in Bonn, Germany last month.

With 152 registered nations Dresden surpasses the previous Olympiad 2006 in Turin with 7 more countries. The participants distribute themselves to 275 teams, therefrom 156 in the main tournament including the second team of Germany and the teams of the deaf, correspondence chess players and blind persons. 119 women teams are starting.

Susan Polgar's Popular Chess blog provided an entry on the Bangladesh Chess Team that left for Germany to participate this big event. I was proud to see Bangladesh's map in that entry. I know most of the players there personally and I wish success to this team whole heaterdly. To see the complete list of all the chess participating nations and players, click this link http://tournaments.chessdom.com/chess-olympiad-2008-teams .