In the last two rounds of the 2012 Chess Olympiad, the two American squads have one win and three tied matches. Candidly, they admitted that even those results required some good fortune. Meanwhile, top player GM Hikaru Nakamura just surpassed GM Bobby Fischer as the all-time highest rated American. His draw yesterday and win today place him at 2786.7, nearly two points clear of Fischer's peak.

The near-horror for the teams began yesterday in round three. While the men were cruising to another dominant result, winning 3.5-0.5 over Venezuela, the women’s team nearly got whitewashed against a young quartet from Uzbekistan. WGMs Sabina Foisor and Rusudan Goletiani both lost, creating an 0-2 hole. Top board IM Anna Zatonskih blundered an exchange in a winning position, and fourth board WGM Tatev Abrahamyan faced the prospect of a passed pawn on her sixth rank, supported by her opponent’s rook.

“At some point, it looked like we would go o-fer,” Captain Michael Khodarkovsky admitted. “It was like a Houdini act.”

Needing to win at all costs to salvage a drawn match, the first eye-opener was Abrahamyan’s opponent capturing back 42. Rxe6. Though capturing with the pawn is not winning by force, white keeps the initiative. Khodarkovsky was looking on but could not explain the move.

A few minutes later, Abrahamyan seized the chance to active her pieces, and the suddenly well-posted knight on e5 became the key piece in a three-mover, which won the game. If instead 47. Rf1 or something simple, Khodarkovsky thought white should hold.

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The result also helped assuage Foisor, whose loss came on her birthday. While trainers and coaches fretted over the results, Tony Rich was out securing celebratory items like cake, balloons and champagne. “It’s very difficult (to get these things) at the store when you don’t speak the language,” Zatonskih said. A “team meeting” was called after dinner, but Foisor entered to see a surprise party in her honor.

Today, things also looked bleak for the women, despite Khodarkovsky pulling out all the stops for his players. After complaints of how bad the coffee is, he took everyone’s order and sent out for Starbucks. “I told them I’ll bring them whatever, just win today,” he said. In the end, he would have to settle for another half-caff kind of day.

Foisor got the day to rest, while the other four women faced Slovenia, led by fast-improving world number two GM Anna Muzychuk.

Zatonskih would play up for the first time, while the other three women – Krush, Goletiani and Abrahamyan, were all reasonable favorites.

Collectively, the Slovenians have had a tough time against the U.S., going 0-4 in their previous Olympiad matchups. They came within a whisker of breaking through today, but again Abrahamyan saved the day.

Zatonskih and Muzychuk have played numerous times in recent years, the most recent being a draw in the European Club Team Championships. Their last Olympiad game was in 2006 when Muzychuk was several hundred ELO points lower; Zatonskih won.

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That left only Abrahamyan, who for the second round in a row played an early …Bg4 in the King’s Indian Defense, and again got a rotten position. With all of her center pawns  being assailed, out of nowhere her few remaining pieces came to life, led by a previously dormant rook landing on the second rank. Abrahamyan nearly pulled out the full point, but even the draw kept her team from another would-be disaster. They now have two wins and two draws for six match points.

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Top-rated GM Hikaru Nakamura could not break through the unambitious pawn structure of fellow young talent GM Eduardo Iturrizaga, but GM Alex Onischuk won without issue to clinch the match.

All that was left to decide was the margin of victory, which is quite important given the complicated pairing system. Consider that in round three the Venezuelans were a much lower-rated opponent for the U.S. than other top contenders who also had two wins but fewer game points. One example of several was Ukraine, who had to play Israel in a battle of 2010 medal winners, and only escaped with a win when GM Ruslan Ponomariov upended GM Maxim Rodshtein from a losing position. The pairing system, too complicated for even Deputy Chief Arbiter Carol Jarecki to explain without a printout, is as follows: match points, followed by game points, followed by Buchholz tiebreaks, which are tabulated by multiplying a team’s score versus a particular opponent by that opponent’s current score, and finally dropping the low opponent. The system is so hard to figure that teams cannot offer any pairing complaints as it is too hard to ascertain the process.

GM Gata Kamsky made the victory a resounding 3.5-0.5 by winning a long and interesting endgame, which began with queen for two bishops. In unintentional imitation of Nakamura from the previous round, he also needed two queens to net the point.

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“We had chances to win and we had chances to lose,” Donaldson said afterward.

The official site for live games and standings is www.chessolympiadistanbul.com  (also bookmark the chessresults Olympiad page).