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By WGM Anna Burtasova
Photos: Lennart Ootes, Madelene Belinki, Mark Livshitz and Stev Bonhage
The Women's Chess Olympiad, like the Open section, will set a participation record this year with 184 teams registered, compared to 162 in Chennai 2022. Several women's teams, including Liechtenstein, Guernsey, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, the US Virgin Islands, St. Lucia, and the Cayman Islands, will make their debut.
The top teams from the last edition - Ukraine, Georgia, and India - are among the favourites in Budapest as well. According to the average rating of their rosters, the top teams are India (2467), Georgia (2462), Poland (2422), China (2416), and Ukraine (2400).
India's lineup is a mix of experienced players and young stars. In the absence of Humpy Koneru, who played in 2022, the team is led by Harika Dronavalli, participating in her 10th Olympiad. Harika debuted for the national team in 2004 and hasn't missed an Olympiad since, playing on the first board 6 times. Her teammates include youngsters Vaishali R, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agrawal, and seasoned player Tania Sachdev, who has been on the national team since 2008. Indian chess is on the rise, and it's time for them to shine. The Indian women have never been Olympic rating favourites before and have only one bronze medal, won at home in Chennai 2022.
The aim of this course is to help you understand how to make tactical opportunities arise as well as to sharpen your tactical vision - these selected lectures will help to foster your overall tactical understanding.
The Indian team at the 2022 Chess Olympiad
Georgia, on the other hand, is a traditional chess superpower with 9 medals in total (4 gold, 2 silver, 3 bronze), the latest being silver in 2022 in a close contest with champions Ukraine. However, Georgia's gold medals were won in the 90s, with the team still led by the legendary Nona Gaprindashvili, and the latest in 2008, with another legend, Maia Chiburdanidze, on board 1. It's time for their successors to remind us of Georgia's women's chess phenomenon. The lineup includes well-known names: Nana Dzagnidze, Lela Javakhishvili, Nino Batsiashvili, Bella Khotenashvili, and Salome Melia. For all of them, this is not their first or even second Olympiad, and they are eager to finally win the gold.
The Georgian squad that took gold at the 2023 Women's World Team Championship
Their task, as well as that of defending champions Ukraine, won't be easy. Recent years have marked a generational shift in chess, and both Georgia and Ukraine are full of "veterans". For example, Dzagnidze's first Olympiad was in 2004. For Ukraine, another problem is the absence of the Muzychuk sisters. Without 2 of the world's top-10 players, it will be difficult to fight for the top spot, yet the team of Yuliia Osmak is rated #5 in the starting list. The lineup continues with Anna Ushenina, Nataliya Buksa, Inna Gaponenko, and Evgeniya Doluhanova. The trump card for the Ukrainians is their spirit. They have proven that they can deliver surprises against all odds, so even a quest for gold is not completely out of the question.
Apart from the up-and-coming India, China has made a bet on a new generation and is bringing in a very young squad. All four top players - Hou Yifan, Ju Wenjun, Tan Zhongyi, and Lei Tingjie - will be absent. Instead, the country that holds the Olympic medal record, having made it to the podium 14 times, more than the Soviet Union, presents a team of emerging talents: 21-year-old Zhu Jiner, 14-year-old Lu Miaoyi, 19-year-old Song Yuxin, 29-year-old Guo Qi, and 27-year-old Ni Shiqun. Lu Miaoyi was mentioned by Tan Zhongyi in her post-Candidates interview as the greatest rising star. She's already rated 2438 and is #31 in the women's rating list. Born into a chess family, her mother, WGM Xu Yuanyuan, introduced her to chess at 3 and started formal training with her at the age of 7.
The performance of this team will definitely attract a lot of attention, and rightly so. After the pandemic years, the young Chinese talents are still relatively unknown and are very likely to cause a sensation in Budapest.
Understanding Middlegame Strategies Vol.1 - 9
In this Video-Course we deal with different dynamic decisions involving pawns. The aim of this Course is to arm club/tournament players with fresh ideas which they can use in their own practice.
Lu Miaoyi
Reinforced by Alina Kashlinskaya and Aleksandra Maltsevskaya, who changed federations, Poland's team is starting historically high at the third spot. Kashlinskaya proved her great form coming out of maternity leave by clinching the Tbilisi FIDE Women's Grand Prix in August. The matriarch of Polish chess, Monika Socko, has been a constant in the Polish team since 1994. Blend in Oliwia Kiolbasa, who scored the best individual performance at the previous Olympiad (9½/11 with a 2565 performance rating), and young talent Alicja Śliwicka, and you get a team that will be fighting for their first Olympic gold this year.
The Polish team at the 2022 Chess Olympiad
The scene for the team competition is set, but let's not forget about individual performances. Among the players to follow are many bright personalities, like Bodhana Sivanandan, who's playing for England at 9 years old, or 80-year-old WIM Rani Hamid from Bangladesh, who is a 20-time national champion and started playing chess at 34, or WIM Natasha Morales Santos, a visually impaired player leading the team of Puerto Rico.
In anticipation of the great chess spectacle starting on September 10, you can check the participating teams here:
Chess-Results - 45th Chess Olympiad Budapest 2024
Master Class Vol.15 - Viktor Korchnoi and My life for chess
In this video course, experts (Pelletier, Marin, Müller and Reeh) examine the games of Viktor Korchnoi. Let them show you which openings Korchnoi chose to play, where his strength in middlegames were, or how he outplayed his opponents in the endgame.
