Halftime

Round 1 of an Olympiad is a massacre by design. The top seeds play the bottom half and 94.3% of the Open games finished decisively. By round 6 that was 74%, and the games got longer with it: 38.9 moves on the first day, 46.5 on the sixth.

The Women's section did the same thing more gently, 97.5% decisive down to 81.6%, and it is still the sharper of the two.

Nothing about that is a surprise. It is nice to watch it happen in a number, though. The pairings pull the field together a little more every day, and by round 6 almost nobody is playing someone 600 points below them.

Six rounds ago I noticed that the Women's section was ending far more games with mate on the board, and said I would stop calling it early. It has not gone away.

120 checkmates in the Open. 444 in the Women's section. Both sections played about the same number of games.

It is narrowing as the fields tighten, from 98 in round 1 to 64 in round 6, and the Open has stayed flat around 20. The usual explanation is that stronger players resign sooner, and the rating gap between the two fields supports it, but a factor of nearly four is a lot of explaining for that alone.

Yesterday's post had the only bishop-and-knight mate of the event, Maili-Jade Ouellet finishing with 109.Bc6# in round 2. What it did not say is what the other side of that board was doing for the hour before.

Olivia Smith of Wales made 51 king moves in that game, more than anyone has made in a single game here. From move 78 her king was the only piece she had left, and she kept it going for another 32 moves. Both of those are records too, and they are all the same game. Replay

Getting mated by bishop and knight means somebody had to run first, and run well. The technique takes about thirty moves from a bad square and there are only fifty before the game is a draw.

Uzbekistan have won all six matches in the Open, the only team that has. China and Kazakhstan have done it in the Women's section. Seven Open teams and five Women's teams have not lost a match yet.

China lead the combined classification, the trophy that adds a federation's two placings together, on a sum of 3. Armenia and India are next on 10.

The best story of the first half is not at the top. Turkmenistan were seeded 65th in the Open and sit 25th. Myanmar were 128th and are 79th. Macau were 178th and are 117th. Going the other way, Denmark were seeded 25th and are 81st, and Croatia were 17th and are 63rd.

Each section has 61 standing records. In the Open, 14 of them were set on the first day and have survived six rounds, which says something about how strange round 1 is.

The rarest things to have happened at all: Anish Giri set up the only Il Vaticano of the Open, two bishops trapping two enemy pawns between them on move 10 of the first round. Replay The Women's section has had four.

The shortest mate of the event is four moves, delivered by Francois Gamba of the Central African Republic in round 5. The longest game is 139. Replay

Ariadna De la Riva Real of Andorra has won nine awards, more than anyone in either section. Sanker Kim of Cambodia leads the Open with six, and Ali Elier of Libya has five.

Homayoun Mohtaat of Afghanistan holds three records that are still standing, including the biggest upset of the event: untitled, rated 1928, beating a 2514 with White in 40 moves on the first day. Replay

At the other end of the field, Wesley So has played the most accurate chess of the event at 98%, and Asrorjon Omonov of Uzbekistan has a performance rating of 2986.

Round 7 is tomorrow. The leaders play each other from here, so the decisive rate will keep falling and the games will keep getting longer.

Five rounds left, 61 records per section, and about 3,900 games still to be played. Most of those records will not survive.

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