The individual results were Alex draw against Topalov, Pascal draw against Kiril Georgiev, David draw against Delchev, and Jack loss against Kolev.

We were outrated by an average of 200 points!

Now the facts: Topalov admitted after the game that he was probably lost at some point. The game was intensely complex, with Alex sacrificing a piece to get out of a bind. He succeeded in getting 3 pawns for it. With only minutes before the end of the time control, Topalov offered a draw, which was accepted reluctantly by Alex.

Pascal completely outplayed Georgiev, won a pawn but could not hold it for long. Pascal has definitely proven (to me especially) that his inclusion on the Canadian Team was correct.

David's game seemed to be a correct draw. He was never in any danger, but also never had any chances to play for a win.

Jack's game was an interesting King's Indian Defence. Sacking a pawn for some play, he reached a fully acceptable position. Unfortunately in the last minutes of play he fell apart.

I consider Canada's result to be excellent! You must remember that Bulgaria is one of the favourite teams in this event: they are searching for the gold medal!

To lose by the minimum score to such a goliath team is no shame.

I showed up for the fourth hour of play. What was most conspicuous was the worried look on the Bulgarian Team captain's face!

Yesterday I was able to visit a bit of the city and learn a little bit about Istanbul. One of the curious things I learned was that since the traffic is so bad in Istanbul (it has ten million residents) businessmen (when in a hurry to get to the airport) hire an ambulance! Not a taxi! Apparently in an ambulance it takes only 15 minutes to get to the airport as opposed to up to 1 hour in a 'fast' taxi!

Another curiosity has to do with policemen: Why is it so hard to become a policeman in Turkey? Because you need one hundred thousand US dollars!