Round 9 in numbers

Uzbekistan came in first and the USA sixth, and all three decisive games were won by White. Nodirbek Abdusattorov beat Fabiano Caruana on board 1 in 49 moves. Replay Wesley So got one back against Javokhir Sindarov on board 2 in 48. Replay Then Nodirbek Yakubboev beat Hans Moke Niemann in 66 on board 3, the day after his first loss of the event, and Levon Aronian and Mukhiddin Madaminov drew board 4 in 31. Replay

India beat Germany, who came in second, 2½–1½, and once again it was board 4. Gukesh won with Black against Alexander Donchenko in 54 moves. Replay The other three were drawn, Praggnanandhaa and Vincent Keymer on board 1 in 57. Gukesh is on 7½ from 9, six wins and three draws.

The team of the round was Uzbekistan 2, 3½–½ against the Netherlands, a performance of 2975 against opposition averaging 2675. Jakhongir Vakhidov, 2527, beat Anish Giri, 2757, with White on board 1 in 53 moves. Replay Mukhammadzokhid Suyarov beat Loek Van Wely in 52, and Ortik Nigmatov beat Erwin L'Ami with Black in 55. Jorden Van Foreest and Abdimalik Abdisalimov drew the other one in 84 moves with 30 captures, tied for the bloodiest game of the round. Replay

Armenia beat Azerbaijan 2½–1½ on Gabriel Sargissian's win over Rauf Mamedov in 77. Replay Next to it, Shant Sargsyan promoted to a rook, 77...a1=R, in a 78-move draw with Mahammad Muradli. Replay France and China drew all four games, the longest of them Wei Yi against Maxime Lagarde in 90. Replay

Ukraine beat Georgia 2½–1½, and the draw on board 2 was the cleanest game of the round. Vasyl Ivanchuk and Nikolozi Kacharava lost one centipawn per move each in 48 moves, and Kacharava's 99.8% was the best accuracy in the Open. Replay

China beat Armenia 3–1. Zhu Jiner beat Lilit Mkrtchian with White in 55 on board 1 Replay, and Lu Miaoyi beat Elina Danielian with White in 37 on board 3. Replay Song Yuxin and Zhai Mo drew. China have 17 match points from 18, two clear of India, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.

Mongolia and Kazakhstan drew 2–2 without a single drawn game. Bibisara Assaubayeva won with Black against Bat-Erdene Mungunzul on board 1 in 51. Replay Alua Nurman beat Turmunkh Munkhzul in 86, in a game where the evaluation stayed within a pawn either way through move 40. A long win from a level game like that is called the Carlsen Grind on the site. Replay Mongolia's points came from Khishigbaatar Bayasgalan, who beat Meruert Kamalidenova with White in 47, and Batkhuyag Munguntuul, who beat Zarina Nurgaliyeva with Black in 45. Replay

India beat Uzbekistan 3–1. Divya Deshmukh won with Black against Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova in 72 Replay, Vantika Agrawal beat Nilufarkhon Imomkuzieva in 54, and Humpy Koneru and Afruza Khamdamova drew board 1 in 45, the highest-rated game of the section. On board 4 Savitha Shri drew with Guldona Karimova in 53, the first game at this Olympiad she hasn't won. She is on 7½ from 8. Replay

Vietnam were the team of the round, 3½–½ against Bulgaria and a performance of 2627 against opposition averaging 2327. Vo Thi Kim Phung beat Nadya Toncheva in 83, Nguyen Thi Mai Hung beat Gergana Peycheva in 69, and Bach Ngoc Thuy Duong, 2098, beat Gabriela Antova with Black in 33. Replay Indonesia beat Germany 2½–1½, with Laysa Latifah, 2213, beating Elisabeth Paehtz, 2404, with Black in 31. Replay

Greece and Georgia drew 2–2, and White won all four games. On board 4 Antonia Christodoulaki, 2101, beat Meri Arabidze, 2370, in 39 moves, and on the way she castled with check. After 16.Bb5+ Kf8 the f-file was empty, so 17.O-O+ put her rook on f1 facing the king. The site calls that a Shahrukh, after the story that Timur named his son after the king-and-rook move he had just played. It was the only one of the round. Replay

Irina Krush walked her c-pawn from c2 to c8 against Svitlana Demchenko of Canada, and 28.c8=Q put a third queen on the board. The award for that is called Royal Court, and it happened 12 times in the round. Four moves later Krush gave one of her two queens for a rook, 32.Qxg8+, and after 33.Qc8+ the game was over, 1–0 in 33. The USA beat Canada 3–1. Replay

Isabella Jeetlall of Saint Kitts and Nevis, born in 2016 and one of the three youngest players in the Women's section today, had a queen and two pawns against a bare king when she pushed her h-pawn home and made it a rook, 58...h1=R. Three moves later the rook mated, 61...Rh1#. A queen would have done too, but the rook got there. Replay

German Gonzalo Quirhuayo Chumbe of Peru and Luke McShane both queened on move 74, 74.h8=Q g1=Q. Both sides promoting within four moves of each other is a Photo Finish on the site. The new black queen was gone by 76.Qxg1+ Bxg1, and it was a draw. Replay

Shermel Timothy of Dominica, who castled with check in round 5, was down to a rook and a pawn against a queen and five pawns, and she gave the rook away with check, 63...Rxe3+. After 64.Kxe3 she had no legal move: stalemate, and a draw from 12 points down. The site's Brilliant!! award is for a real sacrifice that Lichess didn't mark as a mistake, and this was one. Replay

Rafail Antoniou of Cyprus gave 28 checks in a row, from 70.Qxh4+ to 97.Qb7+, and chased Chun Yung Samuel Lam's king from h7 across to c4. That's the longest king hunt of the event in either section, four more than Khady Niang's 24 in round 7. It was a draw. Replay Cyprus beat Hong Kong 3–1, and the four games took 321 moves, the longest match of the round.

The longest game was 133 moves, Nidal Ghanoui of Morocco against Endrit Uruci of Kosovo. Uruci had a forced mate twice, in eight after 97.Rh6 and in twelve until 127...Rg2, and Ghanoui held the draw with 80 moves played under five minutes, from move 35 on. Replay

Jaime Sonhy of Angola spent 68 minutes and 38 seconds on 14...Nxd5, the longest think the Open has had at this Olympiad. He lost to Khaled Seyam of Jordan, 1917 against 2233, the biggest upset of the Open today. Replay The Women's section's biggest was 400 points: Kai Ni Agnes Chong of Malaysia, 2024, beat Olga Badelka of Austria, 2424, in 40. Replay

Age, in a line. Julia Lebel-Arias of Monaco, 82, drew with Ella Miceli-Farrugia of Malta, born 54 years after her. Replay

Lichess analyses every finished broadcast game on its own servers, and by the evening 100% of Open moves and 99.8% of Women's moves had an evaluation, so the accuracy and blunder numbers are Lichess's, not mine. Relay clocks are chaos, so the script looks for the jump where the 30-minute bonus actually lands instead of trusting move 40. Forfeits never count for move stats, results are checked against chess-results every evening, ties are shown instead of broken, and every award links to the exact move.

Tonight's note is about ratings. The highest-rated game of the round is picked by the average rating of the two players, rounded to a whole point. Abdusattorov and Caruana, 2762 and 2789, and So and Sindarov, 2774 and 2778, both come out at 2776, so the site shows them as tied. Add the ratings up instead and So against Sindarov is higher by a single point. I'd rather show a tie than decide it on half a rating point.

Round 10 is tomorrow. Armenia play Uzbekistan and Uzbekistan 2 play India at the top of the Open, and in the Women's section China play India, Kazakhstan play France and Mongolia play Poland. Round 11, the last, is on Sunday at 08:15 CEST. Every round gets its own page, there are team standings with the official tie-breaks, and an overview of the whole event tracks the records as they fall. The site is unofficial and not affiliated with FIDE, the organisers or Lichess.

Got an idea for an award? Lichess comments and the r/chess round thread both reach me.

And thanks again to the Lichess broadcast team. Without the relay, none of this exists.