Uzbekistan tops World Youth Olympiad

Firouzja top individual scorer

Almost immediately after the World Youth Championship (U18-U14) and the World Cadet Championships (U12-U8), the World Youth Under-16 Chess Olympiad was held in the Turkish city of Konya. 39 federations took part, and some countries sent more than one team — the hosts, Turkey, even competed with four teams — for a total of 46 teams.

As in the open Chess Olympiads, each round was a math across four boards. Rather than having a separate section for girls, the regulations called for each team to play a girl in three of the total of 36 games in the competition. Some teams, like the German team simply brought one or more girls as regular team members. Other teams, including the overall winner, played a girl for the absolute minimum under the rules, as German junior coach Bernd Vökler explains below. 

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The German squad: Luis Engel, Jana Schneider, Jakob Pajeken, David Faerber and Nikolas Wachinger were seeded 11th (2351 average) | Photo: Bernd Vökler

The top-seeded team by average Elo was the team of Uzbekistan by a wide margin — the young Uzbeks came to Konya with four players rated over 2500!. Not even the mighty Russians could match that despite having Andrey Esipenko (2609) on top board — the team was seeded second. The Iranian star Alireza Firouzja (2607), followed in the individual ranking with Uzbek talents Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Nodirbek Yakubboev close behind.

Top Uzbekistan players | Photo: Bernd Vökler

India, Azerbaijan and Iran all brought teams with an average of over 2400 into the tournament. But the favourites triumphed in the end. The young Uzbeks won eight of their nine matches, with their only defeat coming in the 4th round against the United States. Yakubboev Nodirbek was the team's best player with eight wins and only one loss.

India and China took second and third place.

Final standings (top 20)

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Uzbekistan against Russia | Photo: Bernd Vökler

Top overall performances

Top performance on board one

Girl rules

by Bernd Vökler

In the Under-16 Olympiad, three out of 36 games for each team must be played by one girl according to the regulations. Thus one-twelfth of all games in FIDE's imagination may represent the real share of girls in chess. This lead to some strange-looking crosstables and team decisions.

Heading into the final round 9, both Uzbekistan and Iran had each used their (relatively weaker) girl twice in the previous rounds — the earlier rounds with easier pairings. Both teams aimed to wrack up a significant enough margin to play their girl the final round anticipating a board 4 loss. That strategy worked out for Uzbekistan, but not for Iran, which lost their last two matches.

Greece even employed a strategy of putting their 1729-rated girl on second board — "fed to the lions" if you will, while their third and fourth boards each posted big scores.

Teams like the aforementioned Germany and Belarus each played their girls (Jana Schneider and Olga Badelka) as much as any other team members for at least seven rounds. China did one better and game with an economical team of three boys and one girl, 2206-rated Song Yuxin who therefore played all nine rounds!

One of the four Turkish managed not three but 36 games by girls — it was an all-girls team — but that's another story.

Another curious case was the team from Sri Lanka which opted to put their weakest link, Wijesinghe N L C Dojitha — a boy this time — on board one, with an Elo of just 1688. Talk about a sacrificial lamb! He went 0-4 against the likes of GM Firouzja.

Translation from German: Macauley Peterson

Links

• Official site
• Full results (Chess-results)