Chess Olympiad in Chennai: The USA is favourite, China and Russia do not take part

At short notice, the All-Indian Chess Federation stepped in to organise the 44th Chess Olympiad. Originally, the Chess Olympiad 2020 was to be held in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, but was postponed because of the pandemic. Then Moscow was planned as the venue for 2022, but with its attack on Ukraine, Russia has left the peaceful community of nations.

The organisation of the Chess Olympiad, a large peaceful sports festival that unites nations, was then withdrawn from the Russian Chess Federation and the Indian Chess Federation offered to organise the Olympiad.

Russia is also not allowed to send teams to Chennai. Russia's men's and women's teams were always co-favourites for the gold medal in the past and would have been so here as well. But the Russian sports federations have been banned from participating in international sporting events.

Somewhat surprisingly, however, the Chinese teams are also not taking part, neither in the Open nor in the Women's Tournament. China would have been co-favourite in both events and won gold in both tournaments at the last Chess Olympiad in Batumi in 2018. However, China has completely closed itself off to fight the ongoing pandemic and only rarely allows its citizens to leave the country.

So now the USA team is the heavy favourite in the Open.

We present to you the 2022 U.S. Olympiad teams! 🙌@FIDE_chess @Kasparov_Chess @STLChessClub https://t.co/LNFm3uLxz0

Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Levon Aronian (who plays his first Olympiad for the US), Leinier Dominguez and Sam Shankland do have an Elo average of 2771, which is one point less then the American team had four years ago in Batumi, but they are far ahead of the team of Azerbaijan, the second seed, which comes to an Elo average of 2705.

Third seed is India, without Anand, but with Vidit, Harikrishna and Erigaisi.

But team two of India is also strong and with the prodigies Praggnanandhaa, Nihal and Gukesh it might become a favourite of the public.

As the host nation, India is allowed to field a third team made up of players from the "second tier", led by Ganguly. However, all these players have ratings above 2600 and still occupy 17th place in the seedings.

Sagar Shah (ChessBase India) presents the Indian teams:

Thanks to Magnus Carlsen, Norway takes fourth place in the seedings, but will probably do worse. After all, the World Champion, too, can only score one point per round, no matter how high his Elo is.

Women's Olympiad

At the Women's Olympiad, the absence of the top two teams from Russia and China is even more significant. After all, in the past eleven Women's Chess Olympiads since 1998, China and Russia together have won gold no less than nine times.

Number one seed is now India, which starts with Humpy Koneru and Harika Dronavalli on the first two boards, followed by Vaishali, Tania Sachdev and Kulkarni Bhakti .

Second seed is Ukraine, and with the two Muzychuk sisters on the top boards, it is without doubt one of the top favourites for the gold medal. Third seed is Georgia and fourth seed is Kazakhstan.

The first round of the 44. Chess Olympiad will start 29 July, 15.00 local time. 11 rounds Swiss will be played, the venue is the spa Mahabalipuram near Chennai. This year's Olympiad promises to be hot as temperatures in July range between 30 and 35 degrees in Chennai.

Top 20 Teams Open

Top 20 Teams Women's Olympiad

Links

• Official page...
• List of participating teams Open...
• List of participating teams Women's Olmypiad...
• FIDE: Participating Teams announced...