# 205 Flags, One Chessboard Each: The Olympiad Just Delivered Its Wildest Opening Days in Years

> The 46th Chess Olympiad has just kicked off in Samarkand, and the first two rounds were packed with shocks — a Thai IM toppling world number-two Arjun Erigaisi, a massive upset by El Salvador over Cuba, and Gukesh sliding under a 2700 rating. Here's what

_By Akash Mitra · Sep 18, 2026_

Picture a hall so big it could swallow a football stadium, filled with more than a thousand players from over 200 countries, all playing chess at the same time, on the same day. That's not a fantasy — that's just Tuesday at the Chess Olympiad.

The 46th edition of the world's biggest team chess event began this week in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and it wasted no time turning into a story of giant-killers, dropped ratings, and one country's players refusing to even sit down at the board.

## What Is the Chess Olympiad, Anyway?

If you're new to chess, think of the Olympiad as the World Cup of the sport. Every two years, national federations send teams to battle it out over eleven rounds. There are 11 rounds played over two weeks, with four boards per team (and one reserve), and a match win earns two points, a draw one, and a loss zero, with individual awards for the best performances on each board. This year's edition is being held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan with 11 rounds that run September 16-27, with teams of five players competing in a Swiss Open format, each match played over four boards.

And this year's field is enormous: 1,028 players participated in the open tournament in 205 teams. That's a lot of chances for a small country to shock a big one.

## Round One: The Upsets Start Immediately

Big favorites are supposed to cruise through the early rounds. Mostly, they did — but not always.

The headline result belonged to a 20-year-old from Thailand. Thai IM Prin Laohawirapap's win against Indian super-GM Arjun Erigaisi was the Game of the Day, while Iraqi CM Ali Ehsan Aryan's draw against American super-GM Levon Aronian was the only other result against a 2700-rated grandmaster. To make it sting even more, Arjun actually had a winning position, but a bad move on move 47 threw the whole advantage away, and he was left needing only moves to survive — he didn't find them.

Meanwhile in Iraq's match against the US, the drama was more personal than competitive. Aryan, rated over 500 points below Aronian, later joked that his real battle was internal — the draw against Aronian was the only other result against a 2700-rated grandmaster that day besides the Thai upset.

Age gaps made for some of the best stories. In one match, an untitled 54-year-old Afghan player upset a 16-year-old grandmaster from Uzbekistan, who was winning but allowed counterplay before a one-move blunder — 26...Qf5?? — lost him a rook in the corner. On another board, Malta's CM Matthew Portelli beat Hungary's GM Benjamin Gledura, while a teammate held another Hungarian grandmaster to a draw.

Not every story was about chess at all. One match was decided without a single move being played, as Pakistan forfeited on all four boards against Israel — a reminder that in both individual and team tournaments, some players, especially from Iran, have refused to begin games with Israeli opponents.

## Round Two: Gukesh Slips, and a Massive Shock in the Women's Section

Round two brought the tournament's biggest team upset so far. With the striking exception of El Salvador, seeded 94th, upsetting Cuba, seeded 44th, the favorite teams won their matches in round two of the 46th Chess Olympiad 2026. Even the winners had scares — Uzbekistan, the United States, India, the Netherlands, and Hungary all found themselves in very real danger against lower-ranked opposition before pulling their matches out.

There was individual heartbreak for the reigning World Champion, too. World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, after a draw with IM Satria Duta Cahaya, dropped under 2700 on the live rating list for the first time in years. It's a quiet but symbolic moment — a reminder that even world champions have rough patches, and that team events like this can be just as punishing as individual ones.

Over in the Women's Olympiad, the biggest shock of the tournament so far arrived on the top boards. We got the first major team upset of the event, with second-seeded Georgia held to a 2-2 draw by 48th-seeded Montenegro, after Georgia's top player lost to an opponent rated 300 points lower and a teammate let a winning position slip away.

## The Faces That Make the Olympiad Special

Beyond the results, this is a tournament full of small, wonderful stories. An 11-year-old is holding down a top board for one of the world's most storied chess nations: England's 11-year-old FM Bodhana Sivanandan, now playing her second Olympiad and already on board one, led her team to a 4-0 win over Barbados with a convincing win of her own.

At the other end of the age spectrum, a legend keeps proving that chess has no retirement age. 63-year-old GM Pia Cramling, an individual gold medalist back in 1984, 1988, and 2022, led Sweden to a 4-0 victory over Haiti. She'll even share the stage with her own daughter this Olympiad, since Pia will be joined by her daughter WFM Anna Cramling, who sat out the first round.

And behind the results, there was some real-world friction too. Ahead of round one, complaints spread on social media about basic logistics, with teams flooding the venue in Samarkand and voicing complaints about the lack of hotel rooms, India's coach GM Srinath Narayanan being the loudest of those voices. FIDE moved to smooth things over, confirming it would cover costs for affected teams while noting that accommodations technically fall to local organizers.

## Nine Rounds Still to Go

With the tournament running all the way to September 27, there's a long road left, and if the first two rounds are any indication, nobody's title is safe — not a world champion's rating, not a second seed's medal hopes, not even a match that's supposed to be a formality.

*In other Olympiad-adjacent news this week: chess is about to conquer its coldest frontier yet. FIDE confirmed plans for the world's first FIDE-rated chess tournament in Antarctica, set to take place during the Antarctic summer in a 12-day window in January 2027, with six players representing all six inhabited continents traveling to the ice and eventually the Geographic South Pole. Even Samarkand's grand hall has to share the spotlight sometimes.*

Whatever happens in the remaining rounds, one thing is already clear: in a tournament with 205 teams and over a thousand players, someone, somewhere, is always about to have the best or worst day of their chess life.