The Chess Olympiad is a biennial

chess tournament A chess tournament is a series of chess games played competitively to determine a winning individual or team. Since the first international chess tournament in London, 1851, chess tournaments have become the standard form of chess competition am ...

in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in 2020 and 2021, with a rapid time control that affected players' online ratings. The use of the name "Chess Olympiad" for FIDE's team championship is of historical origin and implies no connection with the

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a multi ...

Birth of the Olympiad

The first Olympiad was unofficial. For the 1924 Olympics an attempt was made to include chess in the Olympic Games but this failed because of problems with distinguishing between amateur and professional players. While the 1924 Summer Olympics was taking place in Paris, the

1st unofficial Chess Olympiad The 1st Team Chess Tournament was held together with the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, 12–20 July 1924, at the Hotel Majestic. Fifty-four players representing 18 countries were split into nine preliminary groups of six. The winner of each round ...

also took place in Paris. FIDE was formed on Sunday, July 20, 1924, the closing day of the 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad. FIDE organised the first Official Olympiad in 1927 which took place in London. The Olympiads were occasionally held annually and at irregular intervals until World War II; since 1950 they have been held regularly every two years.

Drug testing

As a sporting federation recognized by the IOC, and particularly as a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) conventions, FIDE adheres to their rules, including a requirement for doping tests, which they are obligated to take at the events such as the Olympiad. The tests were first introduced in 2002 under significant controversy, with the widespread belief that it was impossible to dope in chess. Research carried out by the Dutch chess federation failed to find a single performance-enhancing substance for chess. According to Dr Helmut Pfleger, who has been conducting experiments in the field for around twenty years, "Both mentally stimulating and mentally calming medication have too many negative side effects". Players such as Artur Yusupov, Jan Timman and Robert Hübner either refused to play for their national team or to participate in events such as the Chess Olympiad where drug tests were administered. All 802 tests administered at the 2002 Olympiad came back negative. However, in the

36th Chess Olympiad The 36th Chess Olympiad ( es, La 36a Olimpíada de ajedrez, link=no; ca, La 36a Olimpíada d'escacs), organized by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) and comprising an openAlthough commonly referred to as the ''men's division'', ...

in 2004, two players refused to provide urine samples and had their scores cancelled. Four years later, Vassily Ivanchuk was not penalized for skipping a drug test at the

38th Chess Olympiad The 38th Chess Olympiad (german: Die 38. Schacholympiade), organized by FIDE and comprising an open and a women's tournament, as well as several other events designed to promote the game of chess, took place from 12 to 25 November 2008 in Dresden, ...

in 2008, with a procedural error being indicated instead. In 2010, a FIDE official commented that due to the work of the FIDE Medical Commission, the tests were now considered routine. In November 2015, FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov announced they are working with WADA to define and identify doping in chess.

Competition

Each FIDE recognized chess association can enter a team into the Olympiad. Each team is made of up to five players, four regular players and one reserve (prior to the tournament in Dresden 2008 there were two reservesFIDE submits regulation changes for Chess Olympiad
Fide.com). Initially each team played all other teams but as the event grew over the years this became impossible. At first team seeding took place before the competition, with teams playing in preliminary groups and then finals. Later certain drawbacks were recognized with seeding and in 1976 a Swiss tournament system was adopted. Starting from 2008, the first criterion for determining ranking has been match points instead of board points. Teams score 2 points for a match win, 1 point for a drawn match and 0 points for a match loss. The trophy for the winning team in the open section is the Hamilton-Russell Cup, which was offered by the English magnate Frederick Hamilton-Russell as a prize for the 1st Olympiad (London 1927). The cup is kept by the winning team until the next event, when it is consigned to the next winner. There is a separate women's competition. Since 1976 it has been held at the same time and venue as the open event, with the two competitions comprising the Chess Olympiad. The trophy for the winning women's team is known as the Vera Menchik Cup in honor of the first

Women's World Chess Champion The Women's World Chess Championship (WWCC) is played to determine the world champion in women's chess. Like the World Chess Championship, it is administered by FIDE. Unlike with most sports recognized by the International Olympic Committee, whe ...

Results

* ''In 1976, the , other Communist countries and Arabic countries did not compete for political reasons.''
^† ''FIDE organized the online olympiads in 2020 and 2021 following the onset of the

.''
^‡ ''

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

and

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were subsequently declared joint winners after several Indian team members experienced connectivity issues due to a global outage of Cloudflare servers in 2020 Online Chess Olympiad.''
^§ ''The 2022 event was originally planned to be held in Minsk,

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

, but it was rescheduled to

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

, which originally was host of the 2020 Olympiad, which was canceled due to the

. However, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, FIDE made a statement in February 2022 that the tournament will not take place in Russia and will be shifted to

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

.''

Total team ranking

The table contains the Open teams ranked by the medals won at the Chess Olympiad (not including the online or unofficial events), ranked by the number of first-place medals, ties broken by second-place medals, etc.

Most successful players

Boldface denotes active chess players and highest medal count among all players (including these who not included in these tables) per type.

Multiple team champions

Multiple team medalists

The table shows players who have won at least 7 team medals in total at the Chess Olympiads.

Best individual results in the open section

The best individual results in order of overall percentage are:
;Notes * Only players participating in at least four Olympiads are included in this table. * Medals indicated in the order gold - silver - bronze. The statistics of individual medals includes only medals which are awarding to the top three individual players on each board. The medals for overall performance rating (awarded in 1984–2006) are not included into this statistics, but are listed separately below the table. * Anatoly Karpov won another individual silver medal for overall performance rating. In total he won 3 gold and 1 silver individual medals. * Garry Kasparov played his first four Olympiads for the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, the rest for

. He won another four individual gold medals and one individual silver medal for overall performance rating. In total he won 7 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze individual medals. * Paul Keres played his first three Olympiads for

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...

, the rest for the

References

External links

FIDE Handbook: Chess Olympiads

OlimpBase: Chess Olympiads
* Student Chess Olympiad

{{Authority control Recurring sporting events established in 1924 Biennial sporting events Chess competitions