FIDE Online Olympiad: Russia and India joint winners

India and Russia declared joint winners

Press release

Match 1: India - Russa 3:3

Vidit ½-½ Nepomniachtchi
Harikrishna ½-½ Artemiev
Koneru ½-½ Lagno
Harika ½-½ Kosteniuk
Praggnanandhaa ½-½ Sarana
Divya ½-½ Shuvalova

Russia drew the first match against India after saving a couple of very tough positions.

Match 2: Russia - India 4½:1½

Nepomniachtchi ½-½ Anand
Dubov ½-½ Vidit
Goryachkina 1-0 Koneru
Kosteniuk ½-½ Harika
Esipenko 1-0 Nihal
Shuvalova 1-0 Divya

In the second match, two Indian players, Nihal Sarin and Divya Deshmukh, lost connection to their games and forfeited on time.

Arkady Dvorkovich’s official statement:

The Online Chess Olympiad has been impacted by a global internet outage, that severely affected several countries, including India. Two of the Indian players have been affected and lost connection, when the outcome of the match was still unclear.

The Appeals Committee has examined all the evidence provided by Chess.com, as well as information gathered from other sources about this internet outage. After being informed of their considerations and in absence of a unanimous decision, and taking into account these unprecedented circumstances, as FIDE President I made the decision to award Gold Medals to both teams.

Games and commentary

You can follow the official webcast or the ChessBase India webcast below.

Commentary by Simon Williams and Jovanka Houska

Commentary by Sagar Shah, Amruta Mokal and Samay Raina

Each match is played to the best of three mini-matches. The first two mini-matches consist of six games, as per the rules used in previous sections. Every team must include:

at least 1 player U-20 (born in 2000 or later)
at least 2 women
at least 1 girl U-20 (born in 2000 or later)

In case of a tie, a single Armageddon game decides the winner. A random draw decides a category of players (open, women, juniors, or girls) and each team chooses one of their representatives from that category to play the deciding encounter. White gets 5 minutes; Black gets 4 minutes and draw odds.