Opening Ceremony in Tromso

Opening Ceremony

The Opening Ceremony was held about 20 minutes away from the city center, near the Scandic Hotel which hosted the FIDE World Cup last year. The event was quite lively and it had a fast pace, moving from music to speeches to music seamlessly. It was broadcasted live by Norwegian television.

VIPs: Susan Polgar and Anatoly Karpov

not to be left behind: FIDE President hopeful Garry Kasparov. He was also World Champion or something.

Minister of Finance of Norway Siv Jensen and FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov

At one point the entire list of participating countries (180!) was read, and the teams cheered when their country was called.

Southeast Asia and African countries were by far the most enthusiastic

The Norwegian team was introduced to the world. Carlsen talked about the difficulties of playing in a team. Mainly trying to overlook his teammates' mistakes!

Afterwards Carlsen drew the colors for the top boards. Black for China as the top seeded Women's team and Black for Russia in the Open!

There were many musical performances

And what Olympiad Ceremony is complete without an inspiring speech by the FIDE President?

Things wrapped up with a local band playing

Round One Pairings

Of course because of the Swiss system the first rounds tend to be not too difficult for the higher rated teams. However some surprises might happen and it will be interesting to see if any top team suffers in the first round. Here are the top twenty boards:

Open:

Women:

You will find one important team missing from the top boards... China! They are playing the International Blind Association, which as a courtesy always sits on the board closest to the entrance. This time that is board 49.

The rounds will start tomorrow at 3 p.m. local time, one hour later than the rest of the event.

Photos by Pascal Simon

All you need to know about the Olympiad

• Full information on the games, the venue, the atmosphere and what's happening on and off the chessboard – 68 pages in PDF, 45 MB in size.
• All practical details you need to know before and after your arrival, including information about money, the climate, arriving at Oslo and Tromsø Airports, lost or delayed luggage, check-in at the hotels, the accreditation desk, information offices and the opening ceremony.

All ChessBase reports on the 2014 Olympiad in Tromsø