US Chess Team chances in the 6th round in the Batumi Chess Olympiad 2018

After drawing with Israel in the 4th round, Team USA is not in the top 3. The standings actually seems confusing because it seems that not only the Board Points (BP) is being considered. Ukraine who has only 13 1/2 BP is at 4th place after the 5th round while USA is at 7th place despite having 14 BP points.

There is another thing to consider though which is Match Points. The ranking shown at chess24.com is shown below.

If we look closely though in the above rankings, it seems like how they rank in the Olympics where a gold medal is greater than any number of silver medal.

Thus, MP or match points is considered first before BP or match points is considered. Those with perfect match points of 10 after 5 rounds are at the top and they are sorted according to their MP or match points.

The same is being done on all next higher match points. The USA is tied on MP with Israel and Germany, but is at the bottom among the 3, since the US Chess Team has the lower BP or board points.

So WHAT ARE THE CHANCE of the US Chess Team of ever catching up on the 4 leaders with perfect match points?

Actually, in the hypothetical scenario that one of the leading teams Azerbaijan, Poland, Czech Republic and Ukraine goes on to win all their remaining rounds, then the US have no chance of catching up and successfully depending their 1st Place finish last 2016 in the Baku Chess Olympiad.

However, I do believe that it would be unlikely that one of the leading teams will not even draw a single match that would have them drop 1 MP or match point.

Pairings for the 6th round from the Chess.com website.

The above 6th round pairings shows a very tough fight ahead for the four leading teams with perfect 10 Match Points since they are match against each other. While the leading teams with 9 MP are going head to head in Israel versus Germany.

The US Chess Team on the other hand has a chance to extract maximum Board Points and increase their Match Points to 11 against Bosnia & Herzegovina, barring any upsets.