The Chess Olympiad Starts Today (Wednesday)

USA and India are the pre-tournament favorites

177 teams are participating in the 45th Chess Olympiad, starting on September 11 in Budapest, Hungary, and continuing through Sunday the 22nd of the month. For those who are new to these amazing events, teams face off in matches on four boards. There are 11 rounds, and places are determined by match points (two points if the team scores 2.5 points or more out of the five games, one point if the match ends in a 2-2 tie, and no points if the team scores 1.5 points or less). (Individual game points are the second tiebreaker. So, yes, if Team A wins 10 matches by a 4-0 score but loses to Team B 2.5-1.5, and in fact Team B wins all its matches by a 2.5-1.5 score, then Team B wins the event - their 22-20 lead in match points trumps Team A’s massive 41.5-27.5 advantage in game points.)

You can find a list of teams here, along with each team’s members (click on the nation to see their roster). The USA is the top seed, with an average rating of 2757, just a tick ahead of the Indian team’s average rating of 2753. China is third at 2724, with the defending champions, Uzbekistan, fourth at 2690.

The American team is obviously very strong, but with the absence of the world’s #2 player, Hikaru Nakamura, certainly not as strong as it could be. It’s easy for me to say, sitting on the sidelines and without any financial interest in the matter, but if Nakamura’s not playing because of the money, then that’s a pity on both ends: the USCF and donors not ponying up enough for him to participate and Nakamura for not working it out anyway. (He’s not exactly hurting for dough.) He’s not the only high-profile absentee: Viswanathan Anand isn’t playing for India (he almost never does, but that multiplies the pity rather than justifying it), Alireza Firouzja’s not playing for France (which would have a terrifyingly strong team if he were participating), Boris Gelfand isn’t playing for Israel, etc. And corporately, Russia isn’t playing, due to their invasion of Ukraine. (Interestingly though, two of their top players are participating as coaches: Vladimir Kramnik will be taking time out from accusing people of cheating to coach Uzbekistan, while Alexander Grischuk will help out the Iranians. Another surprise is Teimour Radjabov, who would be board two for Azerbaijan team if he were playing rather than coaching.

I don’t see pairings up - I guess they’re not going to do it until the team captains submit their lineups? (each team has five players, and picks round by round which four will play) - but if the pairings are being done by standard Swiss system rules the top round 1 pairings are U.S.A. vs. Syria, India vs. Chinese Taipei, China vs. El Salvador, and Uzbekistan vs. Malaysia. There will be lots of blowouts in round 1, as is typical of any large Swiss, but that also means that there will be a lot of accessible games and perhaps a few brilliancies. There’s no way I can keep up with all the games, so if you see games that are especially noteworthy, please mention them in the comments.

With most of the world’s top players in action including Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren, Gukesh Dommaraju, Fabiano Caruana we’re in for a great event!