At last every game of the second round has been played, the players having defeated even the IGS server mantineance. Let’s see what happened!

Slovakia 0-4 Finland
No player from Slovakia showed, so Finland won all four games by forfeit. The penalty for not showing up brings Slovakia down to the last place. Hopefully they will be able to recover!

Serbia 4 – 0 Slovenia
As expected, the favourites won all four games by resignation. The Mitic brothers are still undefeated, but the hardest games have yet to be played! Once more, one of the most interesting games was played by Nikola Mitic.

Belgium 3 – 1 Austria
Vitor Lin’s return (and victory) on sunday gave hope to Austria, but it wasn’t enough. Once more, the Belgians did their best and ended up winning all the other 3 games by resignation. This victory consolidates their fourth position in the standings.

United Kingdom 1 – 3 Israel
There were a few technical problems, so two games started late, but this was probably the most interesting and hard fought match of the day. Ali Jabarin had to do his best to win against Bei Ge, and on board 4, nothwistanding an extremely big furikawari, Ofer Zivony prevailed against David Ward only in the endgame.

Denmark 4-0 Switzerland
First victory for the Danish team; not many chances for the Swiss players to win on any of the boards.

Here you can find the pairings, games, and complete results.

What’s next? – Round 5
The next round will be played between the 18th and the 24th of January. There will be a few interesting matches to look forward to.

First of all, Israel will play against Finland to try claim the first place on the standings. Then Serbia – Austria, Denmark will play against Slovenia: winning there will give them a chance to gain momentum and leave the bottom half of the standings. Slovakia will probably need to score points against Belgium to recover from their los by default. Finally, Switzerland will try to give Team United Kingdom a run for their money.