Armenia won its second straight gold medal at the Chess Olympiad Tuesday by defeating China 2.5-1.5 in the 11th and final round. Armenia's only win came on board four where Tigran L. Petrosian beat Li Chao. Armenia finished the tournament alone in first place with 19 points. Two points are awarded for each match win and one for a tie. Israel took silver with 18 points after beating the Netherlands 2.5-1.5. The United States took bronze on a tiebreaker after upsetting second-seed Ukraine with a 3.5-0.5 drubbing, getting wins from Gata Kamsky against Vassily Ivanchuk on board one, Alexander Onischuk against Pavel Eljanov on board three, and Yuri Shulman against Zahar Efimenko on board four. Hikaru Nakamura of the United States drew Sergey Karjakin on board two. The rout left the teams tied at 17 points but gave the medal to the US. The results mirrored those at the 2006 Olympiad in Turin, Italy - there, Armenia took the gold and the US got bronze on a tiebreaker. For the second consecutive Olympiad, top-seed Russia failed to take a medal. From 1952 to 2004, they (and their predecessor the Soviet Union) never finished below second place. In the women's tournament, Ukraine defeated Poland 2.5-1.5 and Georgia beat Serbia 3-1. The US beat France 2.5-1.5. Russia defeated the Netherlands by the same score. Those results leave Georgia and Ukraine tied for first and Poland, Russia and the US tied for third. According to the Olympiad website, in case of a tie Georgia would take the gold over Ukraine, the silver medal winner, and the US would take bronze. America's Anna Zatonskih took the individual gold medal for second board and Rusudan Goletiani the silver medal for third board. During the tournament, the World Chess Federation, or FIDE, announced that Kamsky and Bulgarian Veselin Topalov will play a match in February in Sofia, Bulgaria, for the right to challenge world champion Viswanathan Anand of India. They will share $200,000 in prize money. The Kamsky-Topalov match was previously scheduled to take place almost immediately after the Olympiad in Lvov, Ukraine, for a purse of $600,000. In June, World Chess Federation President Kirsan Ilymzhinov personally guaranteed the prize money for the Ukraine match. But the arrangements fell through after Ukrainian sponsors failed to produce the funds. During a press conference Tuesday, Ilymzhinov defended himself and blamed local organizers. “It's not FIDE's fault,” he said. But when pressed by reporters he acknowledged that he was wrong to guarantee the prize money without insuring that Ukrainian sponsors could deliver. FIDE also announced that a prestigious Grand Prix tournament scheduled to take place in Qatar next month has been moved to Elista, the capital of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia. The FIDE general assembly announced Monday that the 2012 Olympiad would be held in Istanbul, Turkey. The 2010 Olympiad is scheduled to take place in Khanty
