The 44th Chess Olympiad has come to an end. Congratulations to Uzbekistan of the Open Section and Ukraine of the Women’s section for bringing home the gold.
In the Open Section, Armenia won silver, while India 2 won bronze.
In the Women’s section, it was Georgia who won the silver medal, while India just edged out the USA for the bronze.
If you haven’t read our coverage of the other rounds, be sure to do so:
Also, be sure to check out our Olympiad course, featuring tactics and a breakdown of each day’s most important happenings, exclusive for Chessable Pro members.
The 2022 Chennai Olympiad is over! The final round began 5 hours earlier than previous days but we were onsite from the start to catch the crowds arriving.
The young Uzbekistan team were deserving winners of the open event.
And Ukraine took gold in the women’s section.
Soon after publishing his first Chessable course, David Howell secured an individual gold medal!
Chessable sponsored the Jersey women’s team in their first ever Olympiad and they put in an incredible performance! Despite only having one rated player at the start of the event, three of them secured the first part of the WCM title.
We’ll be talking to them later about which Chessable courses helped them the most!
And then it was time for one last selfie – we all hugely enjoyed our time in Chennai and will surely be back in India sometime soon!
What happened in the games
For the individual medals in the Open Section, D Gukesh who had an impressive 8/8 start, won the gold medal at first board with a final score of 9/11 and a performance rating of 2867. Followed by him were, Nihal Sarin of India at second board, and David Howell of England at third board. Howell had the best performance of any player of the tournament with a stunning 2898.
For the Women’s Section, 59-year-old Swede Pia Cramling impressively took the gold at first board.
Sargissian seals the deal
Gabriel Sargissian’s game against Alexei Shirov from Spain was all even until Shirov made a blunder on move 15.
15…g6??
White now has 16.Bh5!, a double attack on the queen and the rook, but after 16…Qh5 17.Bxd8? Bh6!.
This did not happen, however, and Sargissian found the strongest move, 17.Be2!.
A gold medal move
The following position is from the game between Max Warmerdam of Germany and Jahonghir Vakhidov of Uzbekistan.
White just played 23.Qh4
23….Nxd5 24.Red3 e6 25.Bxf6 Bxf6 26.Qxf6 and Black followed with the beautiful 26…Qxf2+.
A nice mating net in the Women’s Section
This came from the game between Tatev Abrahamyan of the USA and Kulkarni Bhakti of India.
It is White to play and win.
46.Na7+ Kg8 47.Rg7+ Kh8 48.Ng5 Qf8 49.Rh7+ Kg8 50.Rh8#
Checkmate!
Abdusattorov nearly defeats Giri
In the following position, Nodirbek Abdusattorov had a winning position against Anish Giri. Abdusattorov had previously knocked Giri out of the 2021 World Cup.
32.Re1?1 however let White’s advantage slip away, and the two players ended the game with a draw.
That concludes the 44th Chess Olympiad, the largest event of the sort in history. The event was arguably the most exciting in history, and there are several young talents to keep an eye out for going forward in the future.
