Almost 7 smooth wins and a shocking loss | Day 1 Recap | FIDE Olympiad 2026

Welcome everyone to this amazing recap of today. It was the first round of the 46th Chess Olympiad happening in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and both the Indian teams have done incredibly well. I'm going to tell you all about it, but first have a look at this venue. It looks spectacular, and this is where we are doing the recap. And this is where we are going to break the games down. And this, dear friends, is the Neuro Recap of the day. Ever blundered in a winning position just because your brain blanked out? In chess and in life, lack of attention and focus can cost you games and key moments. Instead of reaching for that 3rd cup of coffee or that energy drink can that can give you jitters or overstimulate you, Try NeuroGum. It's viral in the US. It has a clinically proven blend of natural caffeine that gives you alertness and L-theanine that gives you calm and stable focus without the jitters or the crash. An MIT study shows that it gets you to a high focus 21% faster. So try NeuroGum. It's now available in India. Click on the link in the description. Okay, first things first, we are going to start off with the women's section. And as you can see here, India took on the Dominican Republic and won their match 4-nil. Hampi, Vaishali, Vantika, and Savita Shree. Divya took the rest today on day 1, and I think it's a good idea. She had a long trip from the GCL and did not perform so well at the Global Chess League. And she took break. Let's first get to Humpy's game. So, Humpy is here playing with the white pieces, and her opponent is rated 1833. The opponent is threatening to give a check here on c2, so Humpy played the move rook to c1, a very nice move. And Ramirez Luzon played knight to d5. Humpy took a pawn, and now came knight takes a2, rook a1, and knight to b4 back. And in this position, white played the move king to d2, stopping knight c2. And when black played the move b5, the mistake— this was a key error because now Humpy simply came back with her knight And you can see everything is in trouble. There's pressure on d5, pressure on a7. This diagonal has opened up. And after takes, takes, knight to d5, there was knight d4, a very strong move. Knight is hanging, pawn is hanging, this is weak, and Humpy went on to win a simple game here. So a very strong start for Humpy. Who looked very much in control. When it came to Vaishali, the World Championship challenger, her opening play wasn't up to the mark. She was facing De La Rosa Martinez, 1792, and finally Vaishali did get a position to her liking. In this position, Vaishali is threatening to play rook h4. You can see already things lined up. And so, the opponent played the move g4. That's a mistake. This is weak now. And Vaishali took the opportunity and snatched the pawn on g4. Now you can't take here, there's a pin. So, queen went back to f1. In came queen to d2. A very powerful move. And after the move rook to c1, Vaishali finished off with the flourish rook g1 check, queen takes, and bishop f3 with a mate. So that was a nice finish for Vaishali, uh, as she won maybe the most interesting game for today for Indians as well as I think from the entire women's section. Was Vantika Agrawal playing Gonzalez Peguero, Mary Loli, who was rated 1905. I think she was the highest rated player in the team of Dominican Republic. And in this position, there was, uh, black to play. It was black's move. Vantika was white. She was very low on time. And here, incredibly Gonzalez found the move knight d6. What an incredible move found by the player under pressure. It was move 39. You know, you stop the check here which is leading to a mate, and you are— because the queen controls. And after knight takes, queen takes e5 was played. And Vantika somehow reached the time control with these moves, and here started to think. She thought for like— she got 30 minutes. And she thought a lot. She gave a check on d3 and knight e4. It felt like black is going to be able to draw after trades, but Vantika kept the pressure. She gave rook d8. In came a check, king g2, and rook d4. Now put pinning the other way. She went back keeping the pin here, and finally after all this pressure—I mean queen d1 is equal, queen e1 is equal—but she went queen c3. A huge mistake here by the opponent, finally collapsing after takes takes b six came and now unstoppable is b seven b eight and with that Vantika managed to win her game and that was a very smooth win. I think Savita Shri, her first game in this tournament making a debut against Nunes Diaz Carla Mia. And 1703, Savita showed what is the difference between a strong player and a player who's not that strong. In this position, it's equal. She played the move king h8, a very calm, simple move. And Carla here went h4, and this is the start of the game becoming— going in the favor Of Savita, she played the move f5, powerful move. Her opponent played f4, but in came knight d5, bishop d2, and now takes, rook takes, and queen e6. Just simply by simple moves, black has got a very good position, pressure here in the center. And when f4 was played, e4 was played, fe Knight to f6, and it is now a clearly winning position for Black. Look at the pressure here, look at the knight coming in here, the queen coming, and all these have become weaknesses. So Savitha managed to win, and with that, India went on to create a 4-nil victory against the Dominican Republic. A good start for Team India. But most of the teams were able to do that. Like for example, if you see here, the team of Uzbekistan, which is on board 1, also won 4-0 against Trinidad and Tobago. And also over here, we see that the team of Georgia, which are the 3rd seeds, won 4-0 against Tunisia, while over here Kazakhstan managed to win against Botswana with the same score. So first round is offered these big countries, the superpowers taking on smaller countries, and 4-nil is a very normal score that happens. But the way in which the Indian team did it shows that they are in good shape and in good form. I want to actually, as we move towards the open section and are going to see those games, I want to give a big shout out to the tournament organizers for putting up These LED screens, because this is, I think, an insanely new thing in at an at an event of the stature of an Olympiad. Because think about it, they have to make so many screens work, and that is no easy task. They are able to do that with some insane technology. I believe we have here Javelin who's working on it. Is it is it something that you are working on? You built this yourself. Wow, that is insane. From zero. Wow, this is brilliant. I think that you have built this and best wishes to you.

Idea came from the one goal. The the the prime minister gave us the one thing. The 46th Summer Can Olympiad should be the one, the best one ever happened. Should be, must be, not should be, must be, must be, must be.

And you know, I saw this thing being used in World Rapid and Blitz teams, but there were very few teams in Hong Kong. Yes. And now here there are like 400 teams. Yes. So that is insane.

And this is also very automatically from the King's Awesome.

From the kings, it already automatically updates.

Automatically.

Wow.

Also, we don't know.

So it's a, it's a technology that you built?

Yes.

That's incredible. Well, Javlon, thank you. I will do a separate interview with you on this. Maybe it would be amazing to know.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay, let's go now to the Indian team, the open section, where we start from board number 2. Board number one was Arjun Erigaisi. Pragnananda took some rest. We'll come to board number one because that was the most exciting game. Board two was Nihal Sarin, who played against Kul Pruthanathanadon, 2220 FM, and we were playing Thailand. f4 was played here by white in this position. And Nihal jumped with his knight to g4, attacking the pawn on e3. Now the white knight came to f3, and in came this beautiful move by Nihal, bishop takes c3. And I think this requires a big applause to Nihal, because after this, he completely assessed the position correctly, that this is actually better. Bishop d3, knight here, and then he brought his other knight in. Bishop d7 and long castle, and this is just too many weaknesses. In fact, this bishop on c1 has become a dead piece, and Nihal managed to win this very smoothly. Everyone was actually curious to know what form Gukesh has come, and while playing against a 1900 opponent is not really going to show what form he is in, his opponent Ali Al-Riyami Fariz Rashid, who was 1900 rated. What really stood out for me is the way in which Gukesh found a couple of moves. Now it's black to play here. Black should have played the move queen e6, blocking this pawn, because look, there is a big battery lined up here. But instead, the opponent played king h7, and Gukesh was quick to pounce on with e6, threatening a mate. And knight d6. And here is where he found a very cool move that showed that he is in good shape, which is e4. A wonderful move. And after pawn takes pawn, bishop takes pawn, uh, and if you take with the pawn, I take rook d6, queen takes, there's a mate. And if you take with the knight, I take here and rook d7. With game over, so that's the reason why after bishop e4, well, it's almost over. Gukesh brought his bishop back, put his rook in. It was next very easy for him to create this winning attack. So with that, Gukesh won, and with it, I thought played a very very good game against Kum Kumnar Kiev Tupfa, who was rated 2078, and with it actually. Came into this tournament in good shape, uh, after the Global Chess League. And in this moment here, he's black and he found a very powerful move, e4. The bishop went back, and after takes, I think white should have taken back with the pawn. Opponent took here, and Vidit is so good with weaknesses, he instantly realized That he can actually bring his knight here. So he played knight f6, and his knight was coming into the the e4 square. d5 made things even further bad because now after a6, b5 was coming. This was weak here, and with it just completely positionally crushed his opponent. With this, India won three three nil. We are already winning, and it Felt like Arjun would make it four nil because he was playing against the only IM from Thailand, the highest rated. His name is Lahovira Paprin, IM two three eight two three six three. And you know, Arjun was doing really well in this game, but turns out that the opponent was very very strong and powerful. And did not give Arjun the chances that were needed. So the thing is, white is winning here actually. It's a very good position for Arjun. These pawns are okay. The h pawn is a passer. King is a bit weak, but nothing is really lost. He played the move king d eight here. I believe it was Arjun's move. He played rook g3, king d8. And now I guess the, the important move was rook g7, but instead Arjun played the move queen g5. He went queen b4, very strong move here, and there's some pressure here on the knight. And here Arjun played the move b3, maybe not the best move. Brin made it super difficult by taking here, excellent move. If you take, I take back with the queen threatening a mate here. Arjun found the right response, takes with a check, king c7, and this is where things got really messy. Now Arjun had to take here And had to calculate this very difficult line where his king is in trouble, but somehow black king is in trouble. And he decided to play the move knight f3, a very bad decision because it equalized the game. Check.

King h3.

And now a beautiful move, bishop takes f3. Takes. And queen e1. This is where Arjun got really messed up because now Prin is the one who's threatening all sorts of things— check, winning the queen. And Arjun had to find the only move which was queen f4. Was very difficult to find this because to rook e4 you had to also play rook f1. But instead Arjun went queen g7, a huge error. He missed that after check. King g4. In came rook e4, a beautiful move. Rook f4 only move, otherwise there's a mate here. Queen check. King g3. Uh, queen went to g1. If king f3, rook e3 is a mate. King h3 and Rook e3, and Arjun actually got checkmated. And with this, India lost their first game. What needs to be remembered is that India won the match but lost 3— but Arjun lost his game. The last Olympiad, we had lost only one game in the entire Olympiad in 11 rounds, and here in the first round itself, there is one loss. But I believe Arjun can make a comeback. Tomorrow maybe Pragnananda comes in, maybe Arjun can take a rest. Could be, or Arjun wants to come back again and win his game and get back his form. We do not know what will happen, but today we scored 7 points out of 8, good enough for victories on both the boards. And you can see Uzbekistan managed to beat Jamaica 4-0 over there. USA actually dropped half a point against Iraq, uh, and this was because Aronian lost his game against Aryan Ali Hasan. Maybe it was the biggest of upsets we thought, but Arjun became the biggest upset of today. And if we go further, we do see that even Netherlands won 3-1 with the last 2 boards ending in a draw. So some bit of upsets were there. We now have a giveaway as this is the Neuro Recap of the day. We have these 10 very nice gift packs for you, and you need to comment on this video by saying that if you were the coach of the Indian team, what is it that you would tell Arjun at this point of time that would inspire him to play well? What would you talk to him? And please do write in the comments, and the best 10 comments will receive this. We will— we have figured a way to send it across to you. But first, let's see if your comments will win this prize. For now, this is Sagar Shah signing off from Samarkand. See you in round 2. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.