Aronian, Mamedyarov, Arjun Live Dangerously As Top Teams Win

GM Levon Aronian blundered a piece against 607-point-lower-rated FM Andre Mendez, but still went on to win as top-seed United States claimed a 3.5-0.5 victory over Panama—GM Wesley So's solid draw cost him a place in the top 10. None of the top seeds dropped more than half a point in round one of the 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad, but GMs Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Nodirbek Yakubboev, and Aryan Tari were all lucky to scrape draws.

The top teams also prevailed in the Women's 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad, with nearly every one of them scoring 4-0 wins.

Round two of the 2024 FIDE Chess Olympiad starts on Thursday, September 12 at 9 a.m. ET/15:00 CEST/6:30 p.m. IST.

• Open Section: Aronian Leads The Swindlers
• Women's Section: Favorites Thrive

Open Section: Aronian Leads The Swindlers

On the surface, round one of the 2024 FIDE Chess Olympiad was everything you would expect. The start of the massive spectacle suffered delays, top stars such as GMs Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Ding Liren, and Gukesh Dommaraju were rested by their teams, and the favorites won everywhere you looked.

Full results here

You had to go down to the 30th match to find a losing team that won a game against the winners—Mozambique's Joao Farisse (1851) beat Danish FM Jens Ramsdal (2328).

There were some grandmaster casualties: Australian GM Bobby Cheng went for a flawed queen sacrifice against Saudi Arabian FM Ahmed AlRehily, Faroe Islands GM Helgi Dam Ziska seemed to lose on time in a winning position against 1982-rated Mathurin Nathaniel from St. Lucia, while Icelandic GM Gudmundur Kjartansson fell for a trick when he pushed his b-pawn two squares against 14-year-old FM Xavier Mompel Ferruz from Equatorial Guinea.

The upsets were few and far between, however, with no underdog team scoring more than a point out of four. A quiet round? Not at all! We were a move (or draw offer) or two away from several sensations.

The most spectacular turnaround came for Aronian, a three-time Olympiad-winner for Armenia who's now representing the United States, the top seed. He could essentially have resigned against his teenage opponent from Panama when his 12...Qc7? was met by 13.g4!.   

Levon Aronian looks busted against a player he outrates by 607 points! https://t.co/xGInxuGtiY #ChessOlympiad pic.twitter.com/yPEYalNoAJ

— chess24 (@chess24com) September 11, 2024

If the knight moves, Nd6+! wins the house, so after a sobering 17-minute think Aronian played 13...Qb7 and left the knight to its fate. The situation should have been hopeless, but the former world number-two found a way not just to escape but to win.

Andre Mendez won a piece against 607-point higher-rated Levon Aronian but Super-GMs are tough — Levon pulled off a swindle and went on to win with a checkmating attack! https://t.co/xGInxuH18w #ChessOlympiad pic.twitter.com/AzfaCUG2a9

— chess24 (@chess24com) September 11, 2024

That may have felt unfair to his teammate So, who made a professional draw on the top board and was punished by losing four rating points and falling from 10th to 13th on the live rating list. 54-year-old Viswanathan Anand is back in the top 10, for now! 

Mamedyarov dropped out of the top 20 with a draw, though it could have been much worse for the legendary attacking player who has been put on board four to rack up points against somewhat weaker opponents. 1994-rated Jordanian teenager Anas Khwaira could have been his nemesis, after spotting some fine middlegame tactics. The Jordan team leader explained the trick—and why you shouldn't underestimate the youngster.

What did Mamedyarov miss? Jordan top board GM Ahmad Al-Khatib explains the winning move his 1994-rated teammate Anas Khwaira found before eventually making a draw! https://t.co/4jMzsXRWKT #ChessOlympiad pic.twitter.com/k9d5L2TjZt

— chess24 (@chess24com) September 11, 2024

The game would fizzle out, however, since the 739-point-lower-rated player decided to take a draw at the end, in a position where he was still a full exchange up for no compensation.

We saw the same end when Yakubboev, playing for the defending champion Uzbekistan, stumbled into some lethal opening theory against 500-point-lower-rated FM Quinn Cabralis from Trinidad and Tobago.

Gajewski's LTR 1.e4 @chessable course giving some good results in the #ChessOlympiad! https://t.co/4kbUUXK9Zq a 2169 player with a huge advantage vs Yakubboev 2666! pic.twitter.com/HnFizurJpw

— Juan Almaguer (@J_Almaguer) September 11, 2024

A true sensation briefly looked possible as teammate FM Kevin Cupid was also winning, but that game soon turned against the islanders, before Cabralis took a draw by repetition in a position that the all-seeing computer assesses as winning for him.

One player who didn't stumble into trouble but sought it out is GM Arjun Erigaisi, the world number-four and the Indian board-three. Against FM Jacques Elbilia he went for a piece-sac that horrifies computers, but to no one's great surprise he prevailed in the complications.

That win, which helped India to a 4-0 victory over Morocco, is our Game of the Day, and has been analyzed by GM Rafael Leitao below. 

It was an action-packed round, which ended with GM Anish Giri drawing water from a stone to win the longest game of the day. 

It took 6 hours, but Anish Giri finally wins to give the Netherlands a 4-0 win over Lebanon! https://t.co/6r6zKAHwh9 #ChessOlympiad pic.twitter.com/frx4at0fTY

— chess24 (@chess24com) September 11, 2024

It's going to get a lot tougher in round two, as we get grandmasters meeting in all the top matchups.

2024 Chess Olympiad Round 2 Team Pairings: Open (Top 15)

There are still 15 unpaired teams at the bottom of the standings, due to visa and travel issues. Zoltan Polyanszky, President of the Hungarian Chess Federation, said: "We did a lot to get teams to Budapest," and added that other teams were still on their way: "I would like to ask one-two days of patience. This is a problem of the Schengen area."

FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich backed that up: "The normal rejection rate for Schengen visas is 16.5 percent. Our rejection rate is significantly lower."

Women's Section: Favorites Thrive

With the exception of a few individual half-points lost, the favorite teams prevailed in round one. The following teams finished the day with 4-0 starts: Georgia, Poland, China, Azerbaijan, United States, Germany, Spain, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Bulgaria, France, England, Turkiye, the Netherlands, Mongolia, Vietnam, Romania, and Italy. 

See full results here

There is a 75-year difference between the birth years of the oldest and youngest players in the Women's tournament. The oldest player is Pauline Woodward (Guernsey), born in 1940, while there are five players who were born in 2015.

• Arianna Balcombe (St. Vincent and the Grenadines)
• Skye Attieh (Lebanon)
• WFM Bodhana Sivanandan (England)
• Tauriel A.B. Frank (Grenada)
• Ginger Jubitana (Netherlands Antilles)

Nine-year-old Sivanandan is the highest-rated of the group at 2196, with the world under-eight champion title under her belt. She spoke to FM Mike Klein before her team went on to score 4-0 against South Korea.

Nine-year-old Bodhana shares her thoughts about spending time with Judit Polgar, what playing at the Olympiad means to her, and that she looks forward to playing chess!#ChessOlympiad pic.twitter.com/p4INZZlAeC

— chess24 (@chess24com) September 11, 2024

In every edition of the Olympiad, many teams sport colorful and often creative uniforms or traditional clothing. You can see several of them in the photographs below.

There are two glaring sets of absences among the top countries in the Women's tournament. First, China is missing its top four players: three world champions, GMs Hou Yifan, Ju Wenjun, Tan Zhongyi, and former World Championship Challenger Lei Tingjie. Despite that, they are the fourth seed and 14-year-old WGM Lu Miaoyi (rated 2438) makes her debut as the reigning Chinese women's national champion. The Chinese team defeated South Africa 4-0.

The other notable absence is Ukraine's top-two players who led the team to winning gold at the last Olympiad, the same year it was invaded by Russia. This time, Ukraine is the fifth seed, and the players are IM Yuliia Osmak, GM Anna Ushenina, IM Nataliya Buksa, IM Inna Gaponenko, and WGM Evgeniya Doluhanova, and they made it through round one with a 3.5-0.5 victory against Kyrgyzstan. 

The top team is India again, followed by Georgia and then Poland. GM Vaishali Rameshabu played on board one on the first day as GM Harika Dronavalli, the second highest-rated player in the tournament after Georgian GM Nana Dzagnidze, sat out. Two young stars make their debut on the team, IMs Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal, while IM Tania Sachdev returns. 

India didn't make it to the list of teams winning 4-0 matches, as WFM Raehanna Brown held Vantika to a draw in a queen endgame. Tania won the nicest game; starting with 17.c4, her attack never lost steam.

Georgia was the first of the top teams to finish the day, and they did so with four convincing wins. With a 20-move miniature, IM Lela Javakhishvili showed that the London System has some teeth, in case anyone still holds any doubt. There's a saying that with a knight on f8 there is no mate, but this game proved to be an exception.

One team to watch out for that's lower on the overall list is Sweden, 33rd seed, where mother and daughter GM Pia and WFM Anna Cramling play side-by-side, and father GM Juan Manuel Bellon Lopez is the team captain. In round one, Anna won her game before her mother did, and Sweden overall beat Fiji 4-0. Anna told Klein before the game: "There's the fire within me to win, and I think I have that still from my competitive chess era."

What's it like having your dad as a team captain? @AnnaCramling tells @ChessMike!#ChessOlympiad pic.twitter.com/g6PsD0pdUx

— chess24 (@chess24com) September 11, 2024

GM Hikaru Nakamura recapped that game and more of the day's action:

Thursday will feature India vs. the Czech Republic on the top board, an average team rating of 2467 against 2149. You can see the other pairings in the list below.

2024 Chess Olympiad Round 2 Team Pairings: Women (Top 15)

NM Anthony Levin contributed reporting to this article.

The 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad is a massive team event for national federations that takes place every two years. In 2024 it's being held in Budapest, Hungary, with 11 rounds that run September 11-22. In Open and Women's sections teams of five players compete in a Swiss Open, with each match played over four boards. There are two match points for a win and one for a draw, with board points taken into account only if teams are tied. Players have 90 minutes per game, plus 30 minutes from move 40, with a 30-second increment per move.

Previous Coverage:

• 2024 FIDE Chess Olympiad: 7 Talking Points
• U.S. Top Seeds, India Close 2nd As Chess Olympiad Teams Announced