Erigaisi Falls, but India's Bench Holds at Samarkand

The 46th Chess Olympiad opened in Samarkand with 207 teams in the Open section and 191 in the Women’s, and Round 1 played out exactly the way a Swiss-system event with that many mismatches usually does: favorites rolling, a handful of shocks, and one genuinely brutal turnaround on the very top board.

Viswanathan Anand, now FIDE’s Interim President, opened proceedings with the ceremonial 1.c4 for Jamaica against Uzbekistan’s Nodirbek Abdusattorov, before officials moved to the Women’s section where Uzbekistan’s Alisher Sadullaev played 1.e4 for home favorite Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova.

From there the real games began, nearly 200 four-board matches running at once inside a hall that also doubles as a fashion show, with a best-dressed prize reportedly up for grabs among the more elaborately outfitted delegations.

Most of the seeded teams did what seeded teams do. The United States beat Iraq 3½-½ with Fabiano Caruana resting, Wesley So leading, and Hans Niemann making his Olympiad debut with a 23-move demolition on board two. Levon Aronian was the only American to drop a half-point, held to a draw on board three.

Argentina went the opposite direction with its lineup, putting 12-year-old Faustino Oro on top board despite him being the squad’s lowest-rated player, a gamble that produced a 22-move win and a 4-0 sweep of Kenya.

It’s the kind of early promotion that’s become part of Oro’s story this year, and his rapid climb toward chess’s youngest-GM conversation makes the decision to trust him on Argentina’s top board look less like a risk and more like a pattern.

The day’s genuine shock came against India. Botswana, outrated by more than 400 points per board, somehow split 2-2 with Brazil, but the headline upset hit the tournament favorites directly: Thailand’s Prin Laohawirapap beat India’s Arjun Erigaisi with the black pieces on board one.

Erigaisi had been winning for most of the game. With both players low on time, he needed 50.Qf4! to hold his extra pawn and keep control. He played 50.Qg7?? instead, and Laohawirapap answered 50…Qh1+ 51.Kg4 Re4+ 52.Rf4 Qd1+, trapping the white king in a queen-and-rook crossfire that ended after 53.Kg3 Qg1+ 54.Kh3 Re3+ with Erigaisi’s resignation.

That single blunder is a reminder of what the Olympiad’s format actually guarantees: put enough boards and enough hours of classical chess in front of enough players, and someone rated hundreds of points below a world top-ten player will eventually get a shot at the win of their career.

It happened to Botswana against Brazil in the same round, and it happens somewhere in this event virtually every cycle. What’s changed for India is what a loss like this now costs the team overall.

A decade ago a single-board collapse from the country’s best player might have sunk the match; here it cost India nothing more than a 3-1 scoreline against Thailand, because the depth behind that top board has become the actual story of Indian chess rather than any one player’s form on a given afternoon.

The Women’s section produced its own share of routine results, with all five top seeds, India, Georgia, Kazakhstan, China and the United States, recording clean 4-0 sweeps in Round 1.

Not every favorite had it easy, though: Uzbekistan’s Umida Omonova salvaged a result against Trinidad and Tobago’s Zara La Fleur after Trinidad’s Zara La Fleur let a clearly winning position slip through missed chances and shaky decisions late in the game.

Round 2 pairings will show whether Thailand’s giant-killing carries any momentum, and whether India’s board-one setback stays a footnote rather than a pattern.

Open standings after Round 1 of 11

#	Team	W–D–L	Match Points	Board Points
1	Uzbekistan	1–0–0	2	4
2	China	1–0–0	2	4
3	Germany	1–0–0	2	4
4	Azerbaijan	1–0–0	2	4
5	France	1–0–0	2	4
6	Armenia	1–0–0	2	4
7	England	1–0–0	2	4
8	Turkiye	1–0–0	2	4
9	Poland	1–0–0	2	4
10	Croatia	1–0–0	2	4

Women standings after Round 1 of 11

#	Team	W–D–L	Match Points	Board Points
1	India	1–0–0	2	4
2	Georgia	1–0–0	2	4
3	Kazakhstan	1–0–0	2	4
4	China	1–0–0	2	4
5	USA	1–0–0	2	4
6	Ukraine	1–0–0	2	4
7	Azerbaijan	1–0–0	2	4
8	France	1–0–0	2	4
9	Poland	1–0–0	2	4
10	Netherlands	1–0–0	2	4