Giri Saves Netherlands; Argentina, Iran Upset Ukraine, France In Women’s – chess.com

The seed favorites generally won in round three of the 46th Chess Olympiad 2026, with two notable exceptions on the top 50 boards. The 79th seed Kyrgyzstan beat the 31st seed Brazil 2.5-1.5, while 50th seed Singapore upset 21st seed Norway with the same score. Australia nearly tied the Netherlands, but in our Game of the Day, GM Anish Giri squeezed water from stone in an endgame against GM Bobby Cheng to push his team through. 

GM Koneru Humpy got revenge over IM Stavroula Tsolakidou for losing a crucial game a week ago in the Global Chess League final as India beat Greece 3.5-0.5 in round three of the 2026 FIDE Women’s Chess Olympiad. Favorites Kazakhstan, China, and USA were among the teams to march on with wins, but sixth seed Ukraine crashed to a 3-1 loss to 38th seed Argentina, while eighth seed France was also taken down by 30th seed Iran. 

Round four is on Saturday, September 19, starting at 6:15 a.m. ET / 12:15 CEST / 3:45 p.m. IST.

• Open: Favorites Continue To Win On Top Boards
• Women: Argentina, Iran Pull Off Upset Wins

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Open: Favorites Continue To Win On Top Boards

The matches ended with expected results in the top 10 matches, but not without individual casualties.

Round 3 Results | Top 10

Full results

There were a few very real but transient scares on the top five boards. Uzbekistan had no worries, with Olympiad debutant GM Mukhiddin Madaminov scoring the first win on board four after winning the exchange and converting it. The final sequence against Austria’s IM Konstantin Peyrer was nice:

They made draws on boards one and three, with GM Javokhir Sindarov getting the chance to land a checkmate against GM Felix Blohberger on board two. One could say it was the team’s birthday present for the now 22-year-old GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, playing on board one!

The U.S. was in trouble early on, with Denmark’s GM Bjorn Moller Ochsner outplaying GM Awonder Liang on board four and, impressively, GM Jonas Buhl Bjerre gaining a large advantage against GM Fabiano Caruana on board one.

We know that a knight on the rim is dim, but a knight on a8?https://t.co/5je7eYeaZy#ChessOlympiad pic.twitter.com/rmdGfClnt3

— chess24 (@chess24com) September 18, 2026

Even with a terrible knight on a8, however, Caruana slipped out with a draw. The same could not be said for Liang, who escaped into a complicated endgame but lost his way again (a second loss in a row). On boards two and three, GMs Wesley So and Hans Niemann won the match for the U.S., with So earning a quick and beautiful win on a queen sacrifice after a blunder by GM Jesper Thybo.

So, in a joint interview with IM Carissa Yip, told Chess.com’s FM Mike Klein that gold matters more than anything else, even two silver medals.

— chess24 (@chess24com) September 18, 2026

If India seemed shaky in previous rounds, they subdued that narrative in round three. World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju‘s dip under 2700 on the live rating list didn’t last 24 hours, as his win against Italian GM Sabino Brunello on board four brought him back over to a live rating of 2702. He called 14.Ng5 “a bit too creative,” and indeed it led to a slight advantage for Black. White’s 20.Nc2? was the decisive mistake, and Gukesh found a strong pawn sacrifice for a decisive initiative. 

“I wouldn’t really consider yesterday a disappointment because it was just a very good game by both sides, I think… sometimes you can’t do anything,” said Gukesh about drawing against an international master on the previous day. He also said that the first round was unfortunate for GM Arjun Erigaisi and that organizational issues were partly to blame—Team India waited six hours for a hotel room.

But, since then, things have gotten better, he said. Gukesh also revealed that it was his idea to play on boards three and four, rather than board one, and that his team agreed. “This is the order that gives us the best chance of winning the tournament,” he said, pointing out that the nation’s victory is more important than any individual.

Speaking of world champions turning a new page, GM Ding Liren scored his second win in three rounds against Bulgaria’s GM Arkadij Naiditsch, with the team winning the match 3.5-0.5. Ding said his opponent missed the move 25.Nce2, and two moves later he coordinated his pieces wonderfully for a long tactical sequence that won.

Ding talked to Chess.com after the game and pointed out that it’s his first foreign tournament since the world championship in 2024. In the last two years, he has played in China, but he said he’s also spent time playing sports and watching movies.

“I haven’t played a foreign tournament in two years,” says Ding Liren, who says he’s been spending the time with “many sports and some kinds of movies.”#ChessOlympiad pic.twitter.com/wmerpuBh2c

— chess24 (@chess24com) September 18, 2026

Germany defeated Uzbekistan’s second team (as the host country, they have multiple squads here), 2.5-1.5, with GM Vincent Keymer winning on board one and draws on the rest, but the closest match on the top 10 boards was the Netherlands (sixth seed) vs. Australia (32nd). Australian IM Rishi Sardana defeated GM Loek van Wely on board three, but GM Jorden van Foreest hit back with a win against GM Temur Kuybokarov on board two. With a draw on board four, we had an even score of 1.5-1.5, and an equal endgame with opposite-color bishops on board one.

The Dutch number-one pulled some endgame magic to win that game on demand and bring victory to the Netherlands. That’s our Game of the Day with annotations to come by GM Rafael Leitao.

Continuing down the list, Azerbaijan beat Switzerland 3-1, but Hungary was in early trouble against Slovenia when GM Richard Rapport blundered and resigned against GM Anton Demchenko on board one.

It was Rapport’s first game in the event, and he was only slightly worse before he played an instantly losing king move. Demchenko needed less than two minutes to double- and triple-check 23…Qh4, which won on the spot against his nearly 150-point higher-rated opponent. 

You can check out FIDE’s nine-minute video recap for more detail as well.

France beat Kazakhstan 3.5-0.5, while Armenia won against Sweden by a narrow 2.5-1.5.

Moving on to team upsets, we must immediately jump to Kyrgyzstan, a team with no grandmasters, defeating Brazil, a team with three. With draws on the top three boards, it was the untitled player Timur Daudov (2063) who pulled the individual upset of the day against IM Diego Di Berardino on board four. Di Berardino had a few chances to save the pawn-down knight endgame, and his last mistake was not capturing the pawn on move 54.

The other big upset was Singapore vs. Norway, with three draws and one win on board one. There, GM Jingyao Tin overwhelmed GM Johan-Sebastian Christiansen in the rook endgame (yes, Norway does not have GM Magnus Carlsen this year).

Notable draws included Lithuania holding England 2-2, with GM Paulius Pultinevicius‘s win over GM Gawain Maroroa Jones on board three cancelling out GM Luke McShane‘s win over GM Tomas Laurusas. Moldova held Croatia and Belgium held Iran as well.

You can see several more match scores in the screenshot below.

The pairings continue to get harder as the winning teams face each other in round four. Uzbekistan vs. Turkiye is an exciting clash of two young teams. We should expect a great fight from Turkiye, led by the 15-year-old, 2716-rated GM Yagiz Erdogmus on board one and 17-year-old GM Ediz Gurel (2636) on board two.

The top 11 boards feature teams with a perfect 3/3 match wins, with Singapore floating down to play England, on two wins with one draw.

Round 4 Pairings | Top 11 

Women: Argentina, Iran Pull Off Upset Wins 

We got the first upset wins on the top tables, as Ukraine and France both suffered defeat. 

Full results

Twenty teams still have a perfect 6/6 match points in the Women’s section, including most of the favorites. Defending champion and top seed India was one team to power on, with a 3.5-0.5 victory over Greece. That carried more significance on the top board, where Humpy faced Tsolakidou less than a week after losing a winning position and seeing her team, led by GM Magnus Carlsen, lose the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League. Tsolakidou was gifted a motorcycle as the MVP. 

In Samarkand, the narrative remained the same as Humpy again built up an overwhelming position, but this time, even if her conversion wasn’t perfect, she never lost the advantage and went on to lead her team to victory.

Only GM Divya Deshmukh was held to a draw by FM Anastasia Avramidou, and it was a pattern elsewhere that the perfection we saw in the first two rounds was rare—of the teams in the top-10 matches, only Poland managed a 4-0 win, against Latvia.

GM Bibisara Assaubayeva was held to a draw for a second day in a row, but third seed Kazakhstan beat Slovenia 3.5-0.5.

Meanwhile, the debut of GM Zhu Jiner, China’s top player and the highest-rated player in the event, was shaky. Turkiye’s IM Ekaterina Atalik had a big positional advantage early on, but it required precision. Instead, she played too actively, and collapsed in time trouble.

A match China could easily have lost ended in a 3-1 win, since 16-year-old IM Lu Miaoyi was able to make a repetition in a position WIM Gulenay Aydin was winning…

…and WIM Tianqi Yan rescued a draw against WFM Ceren Tirpan.

Another match that briefly looked too close to call was on the top table—fixed for 13th seed Uzbekistan—where Indonesian WIM Diajeng Theresa Singgih found an incredible escape from a piece down against WGM Afruza Khamdamova.

Her teammates rallied, however, and Uzbekistan won 3-1 on home soil.

The U.S. team continues to look convincing, and raced out of the blocks in round three when Yip exploited an early blunder by her Cuban opponent, WGM Maritza Arribas. Wins followed for IMs Tatev Abrahamyan and Alice Lee, with the match decided when IM Rose Atwell rescued a draw against WIM Ineymig Hernandez.

Yip was confident that, even if this isn’t their year, their turn will be soon. 

Carissa Yip on the US Women’s team: “I think every year the team’s getting stronger and stronger, and I feel if we don’t get team gold this year we’ll get it next time, the time after!”#ChessOlympiad pic.twitter.com/z9OQc7Cnmr

— chess24 (@chess24com) September 18, 2026

Not all the favorites made it through round three unscathed, however, with two big upsets on the top tables.

Sixth seed Ukraine rested their rising star WFM Anastasiia Hnatyshyn on top board, but still outrated their Argentine opponents on all four boards. The spark for the remarkable upset came in the battle of two teenagers on bottom board, with WFM Ernestina Adam suddenly taking over with the black pieces against Tetyana Skarbarchuk, who resigned on move 18 in a position that was falling apart. 

WIM Anapaola Borda won remarkably smoothly with White on board three, so that Ukraine’s top-two boards were in a must-win position. That ended with IM Nataliya Buksa overpressing and losing to WIM Majo Campos, while the score became crushing when former Women’s World Champion GM Anna Ushenina spoiled a winning position against WGM Candela Guecamburu and could only claim a consolation draw.

The other sensation was scored by Iran against France.

Iran, seeded 30th, won 3-1, but the score could even have been 4-0, since Iran had winning positions on the bottom-two boards. The standout moment was when GM Marie Sebag, down to under a minute, went for a kingside attack against young WIM Melika Mohammadi. It was flawed, yet playable, but on move 40 Sebag guessed wrongly with six seconds to spare.

It was essential to play 40.Rxd7!, while after 40.Nxf7? Nxg4 there was nothing better to do than resign. 

Those were the standout results, while a little further down the standings, 12th seed Netherlands was held to a 2-2 draw by 34th seed Austria.

One match result that would normally raise few eyebrows was Monaco defeating Lebanon 3.5-0.5, but the bottom board featured an incredible 71-year age gap between nine-year-old Jessica Kobeissey and 80-year-old WIM Julia Lebel-Arias. It was a real battle that could have gone either way, as the evaluation graph illustrates. 

Jessica talked to Klein before the game.

9-year-old Jessica Kobeissey from Lebanon talked to Mike Klein before her game today… against 80-year-old Julia Lebel-Arias, representing Monaco! https://t.co/BShIbj5CBc pic.twitter.com/Qz8tLhU3T3

— chess24 (@chess24com) September 18, 2026

In round four we’ll already see top-20 sides clashing with each other.

Round 4 Pairings | Top 10

Colin McGourty contributed to this report.

The 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad is a massive team event for national federations that takes place every two years. In 2026 it’s being held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, with 11 rounds that run September 16-27. In Open and Women’s sections teams of five players compete in a Swiss system, with each match played over four boards. There are two match points for a win and one for a draw, with board points taken into account only if teams are tied. Players have 90 minutes per game, plus 30 minutes from move 40, with a 30-second increment per move.

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Previous coverage:

• Round 2: Gukesh Drops Under 2700 As India Beats Indonesia
• Round 1: Thai IM Upsets Indian Number-2 As Favorites Prevail
• Ranking The Teams Expected To Top The Olympiad Standings
• 46th Chess Olympiad: 11 Things To Watch For
• USA Top Seed Without Nakamura As India Prepares Olympiad Double-Gold Defense
• Firouzja Turns Down French Olympiad Spot, Federation Warns Over Future