Canada scored 3-1 against Ecuador in the 7th round of the Olympics in Istanbul. That catapults our team into the eighth round. As of this hour we are still waiting to learn who will be our opponent.

Alex won a nice game against Matamoros. Matamoros is known to be a very solid player with the white pieces. Alex's strategy was to provoke him into sacking a pawn in the opening and get him out of his element.

It worked beautifully!

Alex took everything.

I won a quick and relatively easy win against my young opponent. He tried a premature attack and underestimated my defensive resources.

On board three Igor lost a heart breaker. Reaching a clearly superior position near the end of the first time control Igor made a horrible blunder.

Jack finally won! In a complicated Sicilian defense Jack proved to be much more at home: his opponent was quite surprised to find that he was getting mated before the end of the first time control!

There were no 'off the board' complications today.

Everything ran smoothly. The organizing committee made an announcement that the players can bring in bananas and other fruit. But no sandwiches or drinks: this to avoid the loss of profits of the local concession granted that sells coffee for the rip off price of 3 dollars.

This writer finds it somewhat ironic that Istanbul would invest millions of dollars to organize an Olympics and then try to nickel and dime the players for drinks and sandwiches!

The leader of the Macedonian government decides to send a boat across the Atlantic ocean to shell the American coast (probably for revenge for something).

After this is done, the Macedonian government declares a state of emergency in anticipation of the American counterattack. Schools, stores, government buildings, bridges, etc. are closed because of fear for public safety.

The entire government executive decides to hide in a secret underground bunker.

One day passes; then another. But no American attack. The Macedonian president begins to get impatient. Finally after one week since the Macedonian attack on the us (and still no American attack) the Macedonian president decides to call President Clinton to find out what is happening.

He says to Clinton: 'So, are you going to attack us or not?'

Clinton replies:'We intend to bomb the hell out of Macedonia! But first we have to find it on a map!!'