Chess digest, Sep. 30–Oct. 3: Samarkand remakes the ratings, three Afghan Olympiad players arrested, Saint Louis fields set
The Olympiad's mark on the new FIDE rating list, three Afghan players arrested after competing in Samarkand, and the fields Saint Louis has set for October.
Coverage window: after 10:45 Sofia time on September 30 through 10:45 on October 3, 2026.
The Chess Olympiad had just finished, and the first FIDE rating list since Samarkand lifted Nodirbek Abdusattorov to world number five. Two off-board stories shaped the rest of the window: three Afghan players who had competed at the Olympiad were arrested after going home, and the Saint Louis Chess Club published the fields for October's U.S. championships.
The Olympiad lands on the October rating list
Abdusattorov gained 18 points to 2780 and moved from seventh to fifth after taking individual gold on board one for the champions. 12 Javokhir Sindarov, his countryman and the challenger for the world title in November, gained four points to 2782 and stayed Uzbek number one at world number four, two points behind Fabiano Caruana, who lost five. 12
| # | Player | Fed | Rating | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Magnus Carlsen | NOR | 2823 | — |
| 2 | Hikaru Nakamura | USA | 2792 | — |
| 3 | Fabiano Caruana | USA | 2784 | -5 |
| 4 | Javokhir Sindarov | UZB | 2782 | +4 |
| 5 | Nodirbek Abdusattorov | UZB | 2780 | +18 |
| 6 | Wesley So | USA | 2770 | -4 |
| 7 | Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu | IND | 2763 | +2 |
| 8 | Vincent Keymer | GER | 2761 | -3 |
| 9 | Wei Yi | CHN | 2758 | +6 |
| 10 | Alireza Firouzja | FRA | 2757 | — |
Carlsen, Nakamura and Firouzja skipped the Olympiad, and their ratings held at 2823, 2792 and 2757. 1 Wei Yi returned to the top ten in place of Arjun Erigaisi, who lost 13 points and fell to twelfth after a first-round defeat to Thailand's Prin Laohawirapap and a run of draws. 2
Two movements further down the list stood out. Nodirbek Yakubboev gained 27 points to 2712, the largest gain of anyone in the top 100, and crossed 2700 for the first time; 14.4 of those points came from his individual silver medal in Samarkand and the rest from a 3-1 match win over Amin Tabatabaei on Uzbekistan's Independence Day. 1 Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus gained 15 points to 2731 and moved to 17th, the first time he has entered the top 20; at 15 he has passed Wei Yi's mark of 2721 for the best rating by a player of that age. 1 Gukesh Dommaraju, the reigning world champion, gained seven points to 2710. He had briefly dropped under 2700 on the live list in round two, and the official list kept him above it; a last-round defeat to Hungary's Gleb Dudin cost him the individual gold on board four. 12
The women's list turned on China's board one. Zhu Jiner's individual gold took her up nine points to 2559 and back to women's number two, and China holds the top five places. 12
| # | Player | Fed | Rating | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hou Yifan | CHN | 2596 | — |
| 2 | Zhu Jiner | CHN | 2559 | +9 |
| 3 | Ju Wenjun | CHN | 2553 | — |
| 4 | Lei Tingjie | CHN | 2552 | — |
| 5 | Tan Zhongyi | CHN | 2536 | — |
The biggest gains near the top came from two Americans: Carissa Yip climbed 16 points to 2484 and 13th, and Alice Lee gained 14 points to 2467 and 17th, which makes her the highest-rated female junior. 1 Koneru Humpy gained nine points to 2518, Armenia's Mariam Mkrtchyan gained 47 to 2421, and 11-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan, the youngest woman grandmaster in history, gained 28 to 2382. 12 Vaishali Rameshbabu, who found the Olympiad hard, dropped 17 points to 2452 and eight places to number 24. 1
Three Afghan Olympiad players arrested on returning home
Chess is banned in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and playing it in public can draw a fine. The government learned after the fact that Afghan teams had played at the Olympiad in Samarkand — in the open section and, remarkably, the women's section — under the country's traditional tricolour flag, and that Afghan women had competed abroad without head coverings. 3
Three members of the delegation were arrested when they re-entered the country. Khaibar Farazi, Afghanistan's leading player and a well-known television entertainer, Habibullah Amini and Habibullah Guldoost, the women's team captain, had their passports taken at the border and were then placed under house arrest in Kabul while the authorities decide on a punishment. 3 A fourth, Mirzaad Sayed Wahabuddin, crossed at a different border point without incident, and the other eight members of the delegation, including all of Afghanistan's female players, live outside the country. 3
The case became public through the Spanish chess journalist Leontxo García, who reported it in El País; Farazi and Guldoost had approached him. 3 Afghanistan's FIDE delegate, Adzhmal Mangal, told the newspaper the information was still unconfirmed and that the situation had to be watched; the team captain, Zaheer Asefi, who lives in the Netherlands, said he was more concerned. 3 FIDE has pledged its support for the detained players, and Spanish members of the European Parliament are seeking to raise the case there. 3
In Samarkand, Afghanistan's open team scored 10 match points and finished 128th, and the women's team finished 169th. Three Afghan women hold FIDE ratings, all below 1600, so FIDE treated them as unrated for the Olympiad. 3
Saint Louis sets its October fields
The 2026 U.S. and U.S. Women's Championships run at the Saint Louis Chess Club from October 8 to 23, with 12-player fields, 11 rounds of classical chess beginning October 9 and more than $400,000 in total prize money. 4
Fabiano Caruana, the defending and five-time champion, heads the open field, which also includes Wesley So, Hans Niemann, Levon Aronian, Awonder Liang, Sam Sevian, Ray Robson, Jeffery Xiong, Sam Shankland and Abhimanyu Mishra, plus the U.S. junior champion Andy Woodward and the U.S. Open champion Grigoriy Oparin. 4 Carissa Yip, the defending and four-time champion, leads the women's event alongside Alice Lee, the eight-time champion Irina Krush, Rose Atwell, Tatev Abrahamyan, Anna Sargsyan, Rachael Li, Jennifer Yu, Anna Zatonskih, Nazi Paikidze, Thalia Cervantes and the wildcard Megan Paragua. 4
Games are streamed daily from 12:20 p.m. Central with Yasser Seirawan, Maurice Ashley and Katerina Nemcova commentating, and daily tickets cost $25. 4 The month ends with Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown on October 27–29, an 18-game rapid double round-robin worth $425,000 in prizes, with Hikaru Nakamura, Caruana, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and Javokhir Sindarov entered. 4 New inductees join the U.S. and World Chess Halls of Fame around the championships, among them Ulf Andersson, Boris Gelfand, Nana Ioseliani, Vasyl Ivanchuk and Alexandra Kosteniuk, and the second Saint Louis Chess Conference follows on October 22–24 with Garry Kasparov as its keynote speaker. 4
Freestyle Friday returns with World Championship places at stake
Freestyle Friday restarted on October 2 after a three-month break, and Matthias Bluebaum won the return tournament outright with nine points from eleven rounds, ahead of Oleksandr Bortnyk, Pranav Venkatesh and S. L. Narayanan on 8½. 5 Rose Atwell took the women's prize in 25th place on 6½, and the first prizes were $400 for Bluebaum and $100 for Atwell. 5
The weekly 11-round Swiss, played at 3+2 and open to titled players, is the resumption of the qualifying race for the 2027 FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championships at Weissenhaus, Germany. 6 Freestyle chess, also called Chess960 or Fischer Random, shuffles the back-rank pieces, so memorised opening preparation counts for less. 6 Ten Fridays remain before the knockout finals on December 11 and 18, which award one place in each of the Open and Women's championships, and two online qualifiers, on November 29–December 3 and January 3–7, offer another place in each field. 6 Pranav Venkatesh and Anna Muzychuk have already qualified through the first half of the season, and three places remain open in each field. 6 The Women's World Championship runs on February 5–7, 2027, and the Open championship on February 12–14. 6
Also this window
- Garry Kasparov said US security services warned him that his life was in danger. The 13th world champion, 63, wrote on September 30 that he and another Russian opposition figure, Ivan Tyutrin, had been told to take precautions, and that neither had been told explicitly that they were among the people whose names are withheld in a US indictment. 7 His statement came a day after the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that a network linked to Russian intelligence had planned attacks on exiled Putin opponents in the United States, including him, and followed a Justice Department indictment on September 15 that charged five people over alleged plots to surveil and kill Russian dissidents in the United States and Europe. 7 The five defendants remain at large and the charges are unproven. "But I will not stop and I will not hide," Kasparov wrote. 7
- Jon Speelman turned 70 on October 2. The English grandmaster peaked at 2645 in July 1988, when he stood fifth in the world, and ranked joint fourth in January 1989; he reached the semifinals of the 1989 Candidates, losing 4½–3½ to Jan Timman, won the British Championship in 1978, 1985 and 1986, and played every Chess Olympiad from 1980 to 2006, taking team silver with England in 1984, 1986 and 1988. 8
- 9z Globant won the first Chess Club Showdown. The esports club entered 962 players, led the arena stage on September 30 with 2,368 points and beat Team Liquid 53.5–45.5 across 50 head-to-head boards; 4,400 people from nine clubs played, and one 1,300-rated newcomer's third opponent in the arena was Magnus Carlsen. 9 Carlsen also lost a game to Volen Dyulgerov, a candidate master who streams as Witty Alien. The next edition is on October 28. 9
- Quoc Hy Nguyen, Parham Maghsoodloo and Alexander Grischuk won the October 1 3 0 Thursday events. Nguyen took the first of the three 11-round 3+0 Swiss tournaments on tiebreak from Maghsoodloo, both on nine points; Maghsoodloo won the second with 10/11; and Grischuk took his first title in the third on 9½, after Maghsoodloo beat Reza Mahdavi in the last round to deny him a tie for first. 10 Tan Zhongyi took the women's prize in the first event, her third straight Thursday with it. 10
- A Melbourne man has been charged over an alleged stalking campaign against the Australian streamer Hannah Sayce. Shumsheer Singh Ghumman, 47, faces 35 charges, including stalking and attempting to pervert the course of justice; a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria refused him bail on September 23 and described the alleged offending as methodical and planned. 11 He denies the allegations and remains in custody ahead of an October court appearance. Police told the court he emailed officials in Qatar with a false claim that Sayce was carrying drugs in her chess pieces, after which she was held in a jail cell on arriving in Doha. 11
What to watch next
| Date (Europe/Sofia) | Event & location | Checkpoint |
|---|---|---|
| October 8–23 | U.S. and U.S. Women's Championships, Saint Louis Chess Club | Two 12-player round-robins, 11 classical rounds from October 9, more than $400,000 in prizes. Caruana defends the open title and Carissa Yip the women's, with games streamed daily from 12:20 p.m. Central. 4 |
| October 16–24 | European Club Cup, Budva, Montenegro | The 41st open and 30th women's club cups, seven-round Swiss events at 90 minutes plus 30 seconds, with a €40,000 prize fund; the leading clubs qualify for the 2027 European Super League. 12 |
| October 27–29 | Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown, Saint Louis | Four players in an 18-game rapid double round-robin for $425,000: Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and Javokhir Sindarov. 4 |
| November 10–20 | Total Chess World Championship Tour pilot, Budapest | A 24-player field led by Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana in four groups of six, with Fast Classic games, a blitz Swiss and knockout stages. 13 |
| November 22 – December 13 | Salesforce FIDE World Championship match, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cologny, Geneva | Gukesh Dommaraju defends his title against Javokhir Sindarov over a maximum of 14 games, with the opening ceremony on November 22 and the first game on November 24. 14 |
| November 24 – December 6 | XTX Markets London Chess Classic, London | A ten-player Masters with the field still to be announced; Nodirbek Abdusattorov won last year's edition. 15 |
| December 11 & 18 | Freestyle Friday knockout finals | One place in each of the 2027 Open and Women's FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championships, played at Weissenhaus in February. 6 |
References
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- 2ChessBase: FIDE Ratings – October 2026
en.chessbase.com
- 3
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- 12
- 13
- 14ChessBase: Salesforce FIDE World Championship Match 2026
en.chessbase.com
- 15ChessBase: XTX London Chess Classic returns
en.chessbase.com
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