Chess digest, Sep. 23–26: Uzbekistan lose a match and lead again, Savitha Shri wins seven, FIDE votes
Uzbekistan's run of seven match wins ends against Germany and the host nation beats the top seeds to lead again, China pulls two points clear in the women's event behind Savitha Shri's seven wins from seven, and FIDE's member federations vote for a new president in Samarkand.
Coverage window: after 10:45 Sofia time on September 23 through 10:45 on September 26, 2026.
Uzbekistan's run of seven straight match wins ended on Thursday, and by Friday evening the host nation was back where it started: alone at the top of the open standings with two rounds of the 46th Chess Olympiad left to play. 1
China has pulled two points clear in the women's event, where India's Savitha Shri has won all seven games she has played. 2 FIDE's member federations are voting in Samarkand today for a new president, and England's 11-year-old board one, Bodhana Sivanandan, has completed the norm that makes her the youngest woman grandmaster in the game's history. 234
Open section: Uzbekistan lose a match, then beat the top seeds
Round seven on Wednesday paired the two teams that had gone through their first six matches untroubled. Uzbekistan beat China 3–1, with Nodirbek Abdusattorov taking down former world champion Ding Liren on board one and Nodirbek Yakubboev beating Yu Yangyi on board three. 5 Ding's 22...Ra7?! and 25...Red8? both cost time on a clock already running short, and Abdusattorov converted two connected passed pawns on the b and c files. 5 Javokhir Sindarov and Mukhiddin Madaminov held Wei Yi and Xu Xiangyu to draws with the black pieces, which left Uzbekistan the only team in the section with a clean sheet on every board. 5
Five teams finished the round two match points back on 12/14. 6 Armenia drew the United States 2–2 after Awonder Liang found 21.Bf6! to beat Gabriel Sargissian and Robert Hovhannisyan answered with a win over Wesley So; India beat England 2½–1½, with Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu beating Nikita Vitiugov and Gukesh Dommaraju beating Daniel Fernandez; Germany beat Türkiye 3–1, the Netherlands beat Bulgaria 3½–½ and Azerbaijan beat Greece 3½–½. 56 Abdusattorov stood on 5½/7 for a 2856 performance rating and a rise to fifth in the live rankings; Yakubboev was on 5½/6 for 2933, up 28.4 points and 25th in the live list. 5
Thursday's round eight ended the run. Germany, the fifth seeds, beat Uzbekistan 2½–1½ behind the brothers Frederik and Rasmus Svane, who won on boards three and four for the second day in a row. 7 Rasmus Svane's game turned on Shamsiddin Vokhidov's 16.Be4??, where 16.Qf3 held: there followed 16...Qxd1+ 17.Rxd1 Ne2+, a knight fork that won the exchange. 7 Sindarov struck back by beating Matthias Bluebaum, and Vincent Keymer drew with Abdusattorov on the top board, which left Germany level with the hosts on 14/16 and eight more teams a single point behind on 13. 78 Germany has beaten all three Uzbek teams entered in Samarkand. 8
Friday's ninth round put Uzbekistan against the top-seeded United States. Wesley So beat Sindarov on board two, Sindarov's first defeat of the tournament, and Levon Aronian drew with Mukhiddin Madaminov on board four, so the match came down to the two Nodirbeks again. 12 Yakubboev beat Hans Niemann, who had three pawns for a knight in an endgame the engines rated as holdable until 50...h4? let 51.g6 confine the black king; after 64.Ne7+ Kf8 65.Rf2+ Kxe7 66.Re5+ Niemann resigned. 1 Abdusattorov then beat Fabiano Caruana in a rook endgame in which Caruana kept all four rooks on the board and Abdusattorov sacrificed a pawn to build a mating net. 2
India's 2½–1½ win over Germany was decided the same way. Three draws left the match to Gukesh against Alexander Donchenko on board four, where Donchenko had been pressing before the position turned; Gukesh finished with 51...Nf4!!, leaving both his knight and queen en prise. 12 The round's biggest surprise came from Uzbekistan 2, the 30th seeds, who beat the Netherlands 3½–½ with wins from Jakhongir Vakhidov over Anish Giri, Mukhammadzokhid Suyarov over Loek van Wely and Ortik Nigmatov over Erwin l'Ami; only Jorden van Foreest escaped, drawing Abdimalik Abdisalimov in a game Chess.com made the Game of the Day. 12 Armenia stayed unbeaten across nine rounds by beating Azerbaijan 2½–1½ on Gabriel Sargissian's win over Rauf Mamedov. 1
Open standings after round nine:
| # | Team | Match points | Board points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Uzbekistan | 16 | 26½ |
| 2 | India | 15 | 23 |
| 3 | Uzbekistan 2 | 15 | 24 |
| 4 | Armenia | 15 | 23½ |
| 5 | China | 14 | 24 |
| 6 | Germany | 14 | 23 |
Ties are broken first on the sum of the opponents' scores, which is why India sits above Uzbekistan 2 despite a lower board-point total. 1 France, Spain, Ukraine and Hungary are level with China and Germany on 14, and the United States, Azerbaijan and Greece are on 13. 2
Abdusattorov has played all nine rounds and stands on 7/9 unbeaten, with the best performance rating of any board-one player after nine rounds, 2880. 1 Gukesh is also unbeaten on 7½/9. 2 Van Foreest's 6½/7 with a 2972 performance rating after round eight was the highest in the tournament, and he still leads the race on board two. 27 Yakubboev's season-long run has been one of the stories of the event: he crossed 2700 on the live list in round five and has since gone past 2713. 5
Women's event: China pull two clear as Savitha Shri stays perfect
The women's section went into round seven with two teams on 12/12, and China and Kazakhstan drew their direct encounter 2–2. Elnaz Kaliakhmet, 16, gave China their first individual defeat of the event by beating Yan Tianqi, and Lu Miaoyi levelled against Meruert Kamalidenova; Zhu Jiner and Bibisara Assaubayeva, the two highest-rated women in Samarkand, drew, as did Alua Nurman and Song Yuxin. 69 The gap to the pack narrowed to one match point, with India beating Germany 3½–½, Georgia beating Poland 2½–1½, and Bulgaria, Armenia and Mongolia all winning against higher-rated opposition. 69
Round eight sorted the leaders out. China beat Georgia 2½–1½, three games drawn and Zhai Mo beating Lela Javakhishvili after her opponent grabbed a poisoned piece in a complicated position. 810 Kazakhstan could have joined China on 15 by beating India, and looked likely to after Nurman beat Vaishali Rameshbabu in a wild game in which both players were under a minute by move 27. 8 Savitha Shri turned it around from a worse position against Kaliakhmet, winning her seventh game in seven and rescuing a 2–2 draw. 8
Friday's round nine was the one China had been waiting two years for. Against Armenia, the team that beat them in round five of the 2024 Olympiad, Zhu Jiner beat Lilit Mkrtchian, the same opponent she had lost to with the white pieces in that match, and Lu Miaoyi beat Elina Danielian for a 3–1 win. 2 India stayed two points behind by beating Uzbekistan 3–1 with wins from Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal, and Kazakhstan's 2–2 draw with Mongolia needed another late Nurman win, this time over Turmunkh Munkhzul. 2
Women's standings after round nine:
| # | Team | Match points | Board points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 17 | 28 |
| 2 | India | 15 | 27 |
| 3 | Kazakhstan | 15 | 24½ |
| 4 | Mongolia | 15 | 23½ |
| 5 | France | 14 | 26½ |
| 6 | Armenia | 14 | 23½ |
France, Poland, Vietnam, Indonesia and Greece are the other teams on 14. 2
Savitha Shri has played seven games from the reserve board and won every one, a 2955 performance rating that ChessBase called record-breaking. 1011 Zhu Jiner is second on the women's live rating list and leads the race for individual gold on board one with a 2645 performance; Lu Miaoyi, 16, is on course for board-three gold. 2 Nurman leads the race for individual gold on board two, and Afruza Khamdamova had the second-best performance among board-one players after round eight. 210
FIDE's member federations vote for a president
The FIDE General Assembly opened at the Congress Center in Samarkand on Saturday morning, with the presidential election first on the agenda after opening addresses from Uzbekistan's prime minister, Abdulla Aripov, and from Viswanathan Anand, FIDE's interim president since July. 3
Three tickets are standing. Timur Turlov, the founder of Freedom Holding and president of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation, runs with Anand as his candidate for deputy president; Jan Henric Buettner, a German investor, runs with Malcolm Pein; and Wadim Rosenstein runs with Gordon Tang. 3 Delegates elect the president and deputy president as a single ticket by secret ballot, with one vote for each federation represented at the assembly. A ticket needs an absolute majority to win on the first ballot; if none reaches that, the two leading tickets go to a second. The assembly also elects four vice-presidents, and the incoming president nominates three more, along with the treasurer and the secretary of the Council. 12
Speaking to the assembly on Saturday, Turlov put a figure on the central promise of his campaign: a chess development fund of $28 million over four years, which he said he would guarantee personally, with allocations agreed with the federations. "I gave a personal financial guarantee for that, and I know how to source this money and how to deliver them," he told delegates. 12 He also proposed a media fund to help federations attract sponsors and governments, and said he would work with Rosenstein and Buettner on parts of their programmes once the vote was over. 12 The General Assembly continues on Sunday with the federation's accounts, its development work and the rest of its business. 3
Also this window
- Bodhana Sivanandan has become the youngest woman grandmaster in chess history. England's 11-year-old board one completed her third and final Woman Grandmaster norm in round nine against Estonia, a match England won 3–1. 2 The record she passed was set by Russia's Kateryna Lagno, who reached the title at 12 years and four months; Sivanandan is playing her second Olympiad and had six points from her first eight games. 41113
- The Total Chess pilot in Budapest has its full 24-player field. Levon Aronian, Le Quang Liem, Jorden van Foreest, Abhimanyu Mishra, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Andrew Hong are the last six names into the FIDE-approved event of November 10–20, which sits behind Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana. Play opens with four groups of six in a double round-robin of ten Fast Classic games at 45 minutes plus 30 seconds, with three points for a win and a nine-round Blitz Swiss setting the tiebreaks; the knockouts mix Blitz, Rapid and Fast Classic. 14
- Jorden van Foreest took round nine's Game of the Day for a game he drew. Against Abdimalik Abdisalimov he left all three of his minor pieces in the air at once, in a display of attacking play the commentators called his immortal game; only a draw came of it, yet he took the award and still leads board two with a 2877 performance rating. 2
- Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, 15, was the best-performing board-one player through eight rounds. He beat Canada's Swan Rodrigue-Lemieux in round eight, reached 6/7 with a 2893 performance rating, and had gained 13.3 rating points. 178
- A Maltese player's middlegame checkmate is one of the games the top boards missed. Colin Pace showed his game at the ChessBase booth in Samarkand, where players are invited to present their best work; thousands of games go unremarked at an Olympiad of this size, and the booth is collecting them. 15
What to watch next
| Date & time (Europe/Sofia) | Event & location | Checkpoint |
|---|---|---|
| September 26, 13:00 | 46th Chess Olympiad, Samarkand | Round 10. Uzbekistan play Armenia on the top open board and India meet Uzbekistan 2 on the second, a pairing that leaves open the possibility of the two host teams meeting in the final round; in the women's event China play defending champions India, two points behind, with Kazakhstan against France and Mongolia against Poland below them. 12 |
| September 26–27 | FIDE General Assembly, Samarkand | The presidential vote and the election of four vice-presidents, then the federation's accounts and development business on the second day. 3 |
| September 27, 09:00 | 46th Chess Olympiad, Samarkand | Round 11 starts four hours earlier than usual, at 11 a.m. local time, with the closing ceremony and the medal presentations later the same day. 1617 |
| November 10–20 | Total Chess World Championship Tour pilot, Budapest | Twenty-four players, four groups of six and a knockout stage across Fast Classic, Rapid and Blitz, as the pilot for the global tour planned for 2027. 14 |
| November 22 | Salesforce FIDE World Championship Match, Geneva | Gukesh defends the title against Javokhir Sindarov over 14 games, opening at the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Cologny. Both players are 20, making it the youngest title contest since 1886. 2 |
References
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- 10ChessBase: Samarkand R8 (women) — China lead with 15/16
en.chessbase.com
- 11ChessBase: 7/7 points, rating performance 2955!
en.chessbase.com
- 12
- 13ChessBase: Bodhana Sivanandan — Chess and other passions
en.chessbase.com
- 14
- 15
- 16ChessBase: Chess Olympiad — Live!
en.chessbase.com
- 1746th FIDE Chess Olympiad: schedule
chessolympiad2026.fide.com
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