Chess digest, Sep. 16–19: Kyrgyzstan stun Brazil, Gukesh slips under 2700, Poland take gold (2026)

Coverage window: after 10:45 Sofia time on September 16 through 10:45 on September 19, 2026.

Three rounds of the 46th Chess Olympiad are in the books, and the top of both tables has held. Twenty-one teams in the open section and twenty in the women's event have won all three of their matches in Samarkand. 1 2 The shocks have come from further down the list: Thailand's IM Prin Laohawirapap beat India's Arjun Erigaisi in round one, 79th-seeded Kyrgyzstan beat 31st-seeded Brazil in round three, and in the women's event Argentina and Iran beat Ukraine and France. 3 Gukesh Dommaraju spent a day below 2700 for the first time since 2022, Poland won the Olympiad for People with Disabilities, and Magnus Carlsen named Javokhir Sindarov the favourite for November's world-title match. 4 5 6

Open section: the favourites keep winning, the shocks come from below

The Olympiad is an eleven-round Swiss for national teams, played over four boards per match. A match win is worth two points, a draw one, and board points separate teams only when their match points are level. 3

Round one on Wednesday went to form in the team results, with the top 30 seeds all winning, and produced a pile of individual upsets underneath. Laohawirapap, a Thai international master born in 2006, beat Arjun Erigaisi, India's board two. 3 Botswana, the 133rd seed, held Brazil to a 2–2 draw. Afghanistan's Homayoun Mohtaat, an untitled 54-year-old rated 1928, beat Uzbekistan 2's 16-year-old grandmaster Khumoyun Begmuratov. Malta's Matthew Portelli beat Hungary's Benjamin Gledura, and Palestine's Ahmad Abdel Wahab, rated 2066, beat Austria's Felix Blohberger. 3

Round two was tighter. El Salvador, the 94th seed, beat 44th-seeded Cuba 2½–1½ for the only team upset of the day, while all of the top 28 seeds won their matches. 4 India beat Indonesia 2½–1½, and the board three draw that Gukesh took against IM Satria Duta Cahaya dropped him below 2700 on the live rating list for the first time since he crossed it in 2022. 4 Uzbekistan, the United States, the Netherlands and Hungary all won by a single point against opponents seeded between 51st and 58th, and Estonia's IM Ilja Sirosh, roughly 250 rating points the lower-rated, beat Ukraine's veteran grandmaster Vasyl Ivanchuk. 4

Friday's third round brought the two biggest team results of the week. Kyrgyzstan, the 79th seed with no grandmasters on its four boards, beat Brazil after drawing the top three games and winning on board four, where the untitled Timur Daudov (2063) beat IM Diego Di Berardino. Singapore, the 50th seed, beat 21st-seeded Norway 2½–1½, with GM Tin Jingyao converting a rook endgame against Johan-Sebastian Christiansen. 1 Norway are playing without Magnus Carlsen, Aryan Tari and Jon Ludvig Hammer. 3

Among the leaders, the Netherlands, the United States and Hungary each had to recover from a lost board to win 2½–1½, against Australia, Denmark and Slovenia. Germany and Armenia won by the same score with one win and three draws, against Uzbekistan 2 and Sweden, and France beat Kazakhstan 3½–½. 1 Australia's Bobby Cheng was a draw away from tying the Dutch match when Anish Giri converted an endgame with bishops of opposite colours; Chess.com made that game its Game of the Day. 2 The United States lost Awonder Liang on board four for the second round running, and Fabiano Caruana escaped with a draw against Jonas Buhl Bjerre before Wesley So and Hans Niemann won. Hungary's Richard Rapport, playing his first game of the event, lost in 24 moves to Anton Demchenko after 23.Kh2? met 23...Qh4. 1 Lithuania held 11th-seeded England to 2–2, and Moldova and Belgium took draws off Croatia and Iran. 1

Anish Giri and Bobby Cheng at the board — *Anish Giri (left) against Australia's Bobby Cheng in round three; Giri's win in the opposite-coloured-bishop endgame was Chess.com's Game of the Day. Photo: Rafal Oleksiewicz / FIDE, via ChessBase.*

Gukesh answered the rating question the next day, beating Italy's Sabino Brunello on board four to return to 2702 on the live list, and he put the first round down partly to organisation: he said India waited six hours for a hotel room at the start of the event. 2 He also said the decision to play on boards three and four rather than board one was his own, and that the team agreed because it gave India the best chance of winning the tournament. 2 Ding Liren, playing his first tournament outside China since the 2024 world championship, won his second game in three rounds, against Arkadij Naiditsch. 2

Gukesh Dommaraju being interviewed after his round-three win — *Gukesh Dommaraju after his round-three win over Italy's Sabino Brunello, which took his live rating back to 2702. Photo: Rafal Oleksiewicz / FIDE, via ChessBase.*

After three rounds 21 teams share a perfect 6/6, and tiebreak alone separates them, with 50th-seeded Singapore the lowest-ranked of the group. 1 Round four pairs Uzbekistan with Turkiye, the United States with Ukraine, Spain with India, Serbia with China, Germany with Poland and Greece with the Netherlands. 2

Women's event: Georgia drop a point, then two top seeds fall

Round one brought almost total dominance: nine of the top ten seeds won 4–0, and only Germany, the 10th seed, dropped half points on the way to a 3–1 win over 104th-seeded Malta. 7 England's board one was 11-year-old FM Bodhana Sivanandan, who beat Barbados's Hannah Wilson, and Sweden's board one was 63-year-old GM Pia Cramling, a three-time individual gold medallist. 3

The first leading team to drop a match point was Georgia. The second seeds drew 2–2 with 48th-seeded Montenegro in round two, and both of Montenegro's wins came against players rated more than 250 points higher. Alena Skvortsova (2143) beat Bela Khotenashvili (2435) after sacrificing a pawn to open lines against the Georgian king, and Aleksandra Milovic (2068) beat Lela Javakhishvili (2424), who had been winning. 8 Two more top-40 seeds failed to win: the Czech Republic, seeded 36th, were held 2–2 by the United Arab Emirates, the 83rd seed, and 37th-seeded Slovakia lost to 84th-seeded Tajikistan, while 93rd-seeded Kenya beat 46th-seeded Norway. 8 Sivanandan won again, beating Nigeria's Deborah Quickpen, and England beat Nigeria 3½–½. 8

Alena Skvortsova during a game in Samarkand — *Alena Skvortsova, the 2143-rated Montenegrin whose win over Bela Khotenashvili was one of two that held the second seeds to a 2–2 draw in round two. Photo: Michal Walusza / FIDE, via ChessBase.*

Friday's round three produced the first defeats of top-ten seeds. Sixth-seeded Ukraine lost 3–1 to 38th-seeded Argentina, and eighth-seeded France lost to 30th-seeded Iran. 2 India, the defending champions and top seeds, beat Greece 3½–½, and the top board carried a week-old score: Koneru Humpy had lost the deciding game of the Global Chess League final to Stavroula Tsolakidou in Bengaluru, and in Samarkand she built an overwhelming position against the same opponent and converted it. 2 Poland were the only team in the top-10 matches to win 4–0, beating Latvia; Kazakhstan beat Slovenia 3½–½, China beat Turkiye 3–1, and hosts Uzbekistan beat Indonesia by the same score. 2 Twenty teams are still on 6/6 going into round four. 2

Poland take gold at the Olympiad for People with Disabilities

The 3rd FIDE Chess Olympiad for People with Disabilities finished on Thursday after seven rounds, with a record 41 teams and, for the first time, alongside the main Olympiad in the same city. 5

Poland won it with 13 match points from a possible 14, unbeaten across seven rounds after dropping a point in the first of them, and closed with a 3½–½ win over the Philippines in which Marcin Molenda drew on the top board and Pawel Piekielny, Aleksander Czerwonski and Julia Salamon won. 5 Cuba took silver on 12 match points by beating the Czech Republic 2½–1½, and hosts Uzbekistan 1 took bronze on 11 with the same margin over Israel. 5 "It was definitely a rollercoaster. The first round, losing the points. After that, winning every single match," Molenda said. 5

Viswanathan Anand making the ceremonial first move — Viswanathan Anand, FIDE's interim president, starts the final round on the top board of Poland's match against the Philippines, with the pairing and the players' ratings on the venue screen behind him. Poland won 3½–½ to take the title. Photo: Mark Livshitz and Rafal Oleksiewicz, via ChessBase.

The board medals went to FM Sargis Sargissyan of IPCA on board one, IM Pawel Piekielny of Poland on board two, IM Aleksander Czerwonski of Poland on board three, Darry Bernardo of the Philippines on board four and Michal Racis of IBCA on board five. 5 Selbi Kakishova scored 6/7 on board five for Uzbekistan 1, taking a board silver to go with the team bronze. 5 The fourth edition will again run alongside the main Olympiad, in Abu Dhabi in 2028. 5

Carlsen calls Sindarov the favourite for Geneva

Magnus Carlsen gave a 35-minute interview to the Indian podcaster Prakhar Gupta during the Global Chess League in Bengaluru, and Chess.com published it on September 16. 6 Asked to predict the winner of the World Championship match between Gukesh and Javokhir Sindarov in November, Carlsen said: "I would say at the moment Sindarov is probably a pretty significant favorite," adding that he expects Sindarov to win because "he's somewhat better-rounded and he is more objective in his evaluations." 6

Carlsen was blunt about the champion's form. "I don't think it's a secret to most people that his evaluations are way too optimistic," he said of Gukesh, and of Gukesh's standing he said: "To argue that he's anywhere close to being the best player in the world now is not realistic." 6 Gukesh's rating has fallen from a peak of 2794 in October 2024 to 2703 on the September 2026 list, and he is ranked 32nd in the world. 6

Carlsen ranked the leading young players with Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu first, then Sindarov, Alireza Firouzja, Arjun Erigaisi and Gukesh, and said that none of them is consistent enough yet to separate from the others. 6 On his own future, he said he is "more and more certain that I'm never coming back" to the classical World Championship, and that he wants to keep playing "a few more years, and then we'll see." 6

The match runs from November 22 to December 13 at the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Cologny, above Lake Geneva, over up to 14 classical games with a $2.5 million net prize fund; the first game is on November 24. 9

Also this window

India's hotel complaint, and FIDE's answer. India's captain Srinath Narayanan posted on September 15 that his team had landed five hours earlier with no rooms allotted and no date for getting them; Gukesh said after round three that the first round went badly for organisational reasons and that the situation had improved. FIDE replied that accommodation sits with the local organising committee, and that it had found additional resources to reimburse teams that had to book their own rooms, for up to three days. 3
Pakistan forfeited all four boards against Israel in round one, so the match was decided without a move being played. Players from several federations, Iran's in particular, have refused to start games against Israeli opponents. 3
Three 3+0 Thursday tournaments on September 17. FM Artin Ashraf won the first with 10/11 after ten straight wins that included Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Alexey Sarana and Parham Maghsoodloo; GM Alexey Sarana took the second on 9.5/11, and GM Jeffery Xiong the third on 9.5 after a 9–0 start. The three weekly Swiss events for titled players carry a combined $3,000 prize fund. 10

What to watch next

Date & time (Europe/Sofia)	Event & location	Checkpoint
September 19, 13:00	46th Chess Olympiad, Samarkand	Round 4, with Uzbekistan–Turkiye, United States–Ukraine and Spain–India on the top boards. 2
September 20–21, 13:00	46th Chess Olympiad, Samarkand	Rounds 5 and 6, both starting at 3 p.m. local time. 11
September 22	46th Chess Olympiad, Samarkand	Rest day. 11
September 23–26, 13:00	46th Chess Olympiad, Samarkand	Rounds 7 to 10. 11
September 26–27	FIDE General Assembly, Samarkand	The Congress week closes with the presidential election and the vote for four elected vice-presidents. 12
September 27, 09:00	46th Chess Olympiad, Samarkand	Round 11 starts at 11 a.m. local time, with the closing ceremony later that day. 11
November 22–December 13	Salesforce World Championship Match, Cologny, Switzerland	Gukesh D defends the title against Javokhir Sindarov over up to 14 games, the first of them on November 24. 9