Ratings: FIDE Top 100 / FIDE Top 100 women / FIDE Top 100 juniors / FIDE Top 100 girls

FIDE Ratings Revisited, by Vlad Ghita

In this article, I revisit FIDE’s recent rating changes and examine whether the Elo system still serves chess effectively. With data spanning March 2024 to June 2025, I show how global deflation, junior-driven volatility, and cross-federation mismatches expose systemic flaws. The system’s rigidity in a rapidly evolving chess landscape demands statistical modernization. Let’s unpack what the numbers reveal.

The assumed audience is comprised of chess hobbyists, tournament players, and FIDE stakeholders. Some basic math and stats will help, but no deep dives into formulas, I promise. If you want to skip ahead to a particular section, here’s the outline:

1. A System Under Scrutiny
2. Background: Floors, Adjustments, and Band-Aids
3. The Numbers Tell the Story: Deflation is Real
4. Global Activity: More Games, More Data, But Not Better Ratings
5. Why Elo Breaks Down
6. Conclusion: A Future-Proof Rating System?

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1. A System Under Scrutiny

Last year, while the changes were still nascent, I explored the effects of FIDE’s new rating policies and the broader implications of the adjustments within the standard Elo framework. That article, ‘FIDE Rating Changes: Are They Working So Far?’, raised eyebrows and garnered 5 full pages of comments to go along with nearly 20,000 views on Lichess!

Since then, the chess calendar has accelerated. New players are flooding in where federations invest in chess. Norm tournaments are increasing in places once considered off-the-radar, while European opens are becoming attractive for those who do not have the opportunities to face such a diverse array of high-rated players at home. All the while, FIDE’s rating system keeps churning out numbers rigidly and indifferently.

The FIDE rating system, built on the Elo formula, was revolutionary for its time. But in a chess world shaped by hyperactivity, global mobility, and asymmetrical tournament access, it’s starting to buckle. This article re-examines how well the Elo framework serves the modern chess ecosystem and where it fails.

Imagine two players, both rated 1800. One’s from Denmark, the other from Sri Lanka. On paper, they’re equals. In practice? One crushes the other 9 times out of 10. That’s not a bug in the system, it’s the system itself not adapting to today’s context.

2. Background: Floors, Adjustments, and Band-Aids

The Elo system was built on the assumption that only skilled players enter rated competition. That made sense in 1970 when FIDE adopted Elo. The first published list in 1971 had just ~600 players, led by Fischer. The rating floor? 2200.

Over time, that floor dropped:

• 1993: reduced to 2000
• Eventually: down to 1000 by the 2010s
• 2024: reversed — raised again to 1400

Lowering the floor absorbed more players into the system, but also diluted the rating pool. Today’s ecosystem includes casuals, ambitious juniors, and professional aspirants in the same pool.

Timeline Snapshot

Rating Floors
2200 → 2000 → 1800 → 1600 → 1400 → 1200 → 1000 → 1400

K-Factor Evolution
Pre-2014:

• K = 30 (or 25) for newcomers
• K = 15 for <2400
• K = 10 for ≥2400
  Post-2014:
• K = 40 for new players (or U18 <2300)
• K = 20 for <2400
• K = 10 for ≥2400

Publication Frequency
Annual → Semiannual (1981) → Quarterly (2000) → Bi-monthly (2009) → Monthly (since 2012)

Rating Range Capping
The “400-point rule”, capping rating differences in game calculations, has toggled on and off:

• “350-point rule” (pre-2011)
• Abolished (2022), reinstated (2024)

Major 2024 Reforms

• One-time inflation boost:
      Players <2000 received: 0.4 × (2000 − rating)
• Floor raised from 1000 to 1400
• New initial rating method:
      Performance-based + 2 fictitious draws vs 1800
• 400-point rule restored for all games

The Rating Floor = Artificial Ceiling
Raising or lowering the rating floor doesn’t just affect beginners. It compresses the entire rating spectrum, squeezing out distinction and limiting upward mobility for ambitious players. While the rating floor changes managed to absorb more players into the system, it had a negative impact on those with higher aspirations for titles.

I found a gloomy reminder of that, and implicitly of my own title aspirations, last week while browsing the social media platform X. The user Gutsy Gambit posted the following screenshot, comparing active player distributions in June 2015 and June 2025 side-by-side. The comparison prompted me to explore deeper and write this follow-up.

Even as the number of active players has surged, ratings above 2000 Elo have steadily deflated – not from declining skill, but from systemic flaws. So, maybe instead of patching things up every few years, the time has come to rip off the band-aid?

3. The Numbers Tell the Story: Deflation is Real

Here’s what the rating distribution has done since March 2024. Each graph follows immediately below each bullet point.

• A time-series of how the distribution of players has shifted since March 2024
  • Key trend: More and more players are clustering around the 1500 mark — a clear sign of rating pool compression

• A detailed histogram snapshot taken at the time of this article (June 2025)
  • Notice the pile-up at 1400: this is an artifact of the floor rule, not actual player skill. We’ll revisit this later.

• A plot of the number of Standard FIDE-rated players
  • ~3,500 new players are added per month, yet the average rating keeps declining.

• A line plot of the average rating in the entire dataset across the interval from March 2024 to June 2025
  • Average rating is falling at ~1 Elo/month, despite growing participation.

• A six-panel summary plot that explores the evolution of the distribution
  • Deflation in the fixed percentiles across the board (including at the elite, top 1% level)
  • Increased skewness and kurtosis (or more asymmetry and sharper peaks)
  • Rapid rise of sub-1600 players
  • A strange anomaly with player counts in July 2024
  • Closing of the gaps between fixed percentiles (narrower distribution)

The 1800–1999 rating band is slowly being replaced by the 1400–1599 band. This isn’t a performance decline, it’s structural compression. The deflation persists across all percentiles.

Over the past 20+ years, some of these measures appear to be stopgap solutions that FIDE implemented. In particular, among the top brass of FIDE, there’s a widespread belief that the Elo system is the only acceptable solution for players to be able to calculate their own requirements for scoring title norms. Although I don’t expect immediate action, I hope my points here are compelling enough to lead to some reflection and internal discussion. If I can be of any help in such discussions, I would gladly participate.

The Elo system flattens complexity into simplicity, but in doing so, it also flattens its own validity. It reacts too slowly for fast-improving players, and too weakly to structural asymmetries such as geographic and economic disparities. And while it still works well for elite stability, the bulk of the chess ecosystem suffers from its rigidity. Aspiring players have bigger roadblocks in their way to the top, and casual players suffer from a system that is biased against them.

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4. Global Activity: More Games, More Data, But Not Better Ratings

The renewed popularity of chess can be attributed to 3 main factors:

• Pandemic shutdowns and an increase in work-from-home
• The Netflix show The Queen’s Gambit
• More chess content on livestreaming platforms such as Twitch and YouTube

If we assume that 2021 was the first year OTB chess activity resumed in earnest, we can take a look at the number of games played in this interval, compare it to pre-pandemic levels, and also forecast some future growth. I have chosen to discard the 2020 year entirely from the visualization, as it’s a clear outlier.

Although the post-pandemic increasing trend is starting to flatten out a bit, we are still due to eclipse 3.5 million games by the end of 2025. The recovery has been nothing short of impressive, with 2024 being the most active year in history, which coincided with the FIDE centenary celebration.

In his Supplemental Report, statistician Jeff Sonas introduced a 3-point segmentation based on age ranges. I will recast that visualization here, taken from page 8 of his report, and showing the April 2023 rating distributions.

Source: Sonas, J. (2023). Supplemental Report, p. 8

I have independently verified that this segmentation is valid for game data post-compression, at least for the interval March-December 2024. Let’s show how:

The color coding is different here, but I hope the relationship is clear:

• improvers gain rating consistently by playing more games, as we would expect
• stable players see a smaller improvement with playing more games
• decliners lose rating slightly, as expected

Maybe you don’t agree that this age segmentation is correct, and prefer to look at more granular age groups, separated into rating bins. Here’s that analysis, spanning March 2024 to June 2025:

For now, let’s say that I managed to convince even the most skeptical readers that the young players are the most dangerous to face, since they improve the fastest. Their K-factor is of course a big helper during their ascent, but even when accounting for the K-factor asymmetry, we see a big discrepancy that favors the U16 players. For those who already play rated OTB tournaments consistently, the pain of losing to an underrated junior is all too real. Beyond that, there’s an even scarier thought out there!

The chart above illustrates what I deem to be FIDE’s biggest challenge over the upcoming years. This is a striking implication!

Same Rating, Different Reality
A player rated 1800 in Sri Lanka and one rated 1800 in Denmark might share a number, but not a skill level. This is reflected in their URS ratings, but Elo is completely naive to it. This isn’t an isolated mismatch. It’s the norm when federations with deflated pools meet those with inflated ones and Elo has no way of knowing.

The static K-factor and single-rating assumption struggles in this dynamic environment with players from various federations mixing in open events. Yet, the example above was merely a thought experiment. Out in the real world, this happens more frequently than before in large Swiss tournaments, where the mixing of federations offers the juniors from underrated countries a huge incentive to participate and “farm” rating from their unsuspecting opponents. A typical example is the Sunway Sitges tournament in Spain, which often attracts a lot of youth participants from India. Here’s a screenshot of Sunway Sitges 2024:

Of ~20 Indian players rated below 2000 listed above, only one – Adarsh D – underperformed their starting rank and finished lower. This is consistent with the belief that amateur Indian players are often more underrated than their professional counterparts, and has given rise to a new phenomenon where established European players often avoid tournaments for fear of getting paired to these extremely dangerous opponents. However, the discussion shouldn’t be limited to India alone. Federations from Central Asia, such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, also have a wide array of extremely talented juniors, with Kazakhstan scoring particularly well in World Youth Championships recently.

David Smerdon, a known Grandmaster and Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland reiterates this geographical disparity and puts a different highlight on it: “It’s not an age thing, it’s a not-enough-FIDE-tournaments thing. Poorer federations are more likely to have deflated ratings because submitting FIDE tournaments is costly. So, there’s a correlation between country GDP and ratings inflation, which some might find problematic.”

While I agree that there’s a correlation between country GDP and ratings inflation, I think a bigger factor at play is the number of active youth players in that respective federation. Now, I will illustrate that chess is a young person’s game:

Look at the last diagram, which superimposes the top two diagrams. Compared to their representation in the set of all players, teenagers have been more active in 2024 and they show no sign of stopping in 2025. This is quite relevant because it introduces a “K-factor asymmetry” into the pool. If there’s often mixing between asymmetric K-factors (say, someone with K=40 facing someone with K=20), we expect the lower-rated youth players to add an inflationary pressure in the system, by extracting double the rating points from their more established opponents. And here’s the kicker: even with all the tweaks, deflation still hasn’t gone away!

5. Why Elo Breaks Down

Elo’s Blind Spots
A system designed decades ago for top players competing in elite round-robin events assumes all players compete under equal conditions. It doesn’t factor in regional differences, economic disparities, or uneven tournament access. It hardly accounts for uneven matchups where players are separated by more than 400 points. The consequences? Widespread rating distortions and unfairness.

This article has shown both the symptoms (global deflation, geographical rating disparities, youth-driven volatility) and the underlying causes. At the heart of these problems lie three fundamental limitations of the Elo framework

• Elo assumes a logistic distribution→ Only motivated players participate in rated tournaments, which would be more consistent with a log-normal distribution→ Skill increases multiplicatively (each new concept learned builds on previous ones), and not linearly→ There’s a long “tail” of elite players
  • The graph below showcases key differences between the two distributions. They are not based on real data, but rather simulated data sets to illustrate the shape difference.

• Static K-factors
  → They’re blunt instruments. Fast-rising players get stuck. Declining ones linger too long. A better measure would be a context-dependent volatility parameter. Inactive for too long? There’s no certainty your rating is meaningful.
• Geographic and economic blind spots
  → Elo doesn’t adjust for regional inflation or deflation, nor does it consider tournament access or federation disparities. A 1900 in Denmark and a 1900 in Sri Lanka? Night and day. Elo sees no difference.

6. Conclusion: A Future-Proof Rating System?

Chess has evolved since 1970. The rating system hasn’t.

We now compete in a world of open tournaments, global mobility, asymmetric federation structures, and thousands of improving juniors who can accumulate hundreds of classical games per year. Yet FIDE still relies on a system built for closed, round-robin events between national elites. That system was revolutionary in its time. Today, it’s showing its cracks.

FIDE’s recent changes: the one-time sub-2000 adjustment, the reintroduction of the 400-point rule, the rating floor increase to 1400, are all sincere attempts at relief. But they remain reactive and fundamentally tied to an aging core assumption: that Elo is good enough.

We don’t need to burn the whole system down. But it’s time we build something that fits today’s chess world, with some key ingredients:

• Flexibility.
• Responsiveness.
• Contextual strength estimation.
• Models that can keep up with how players actually improve.

It won’t be easy to replace Elo. It’s embedded into our title systems and our historical lists. But if we value accuracy, fairness, and objectivity of the rating system, we owe it to ourselves to analyze things deeper. How long can a modern game run on a vintage algorithm?

The chess world has changed. Today, our clocks are digital and our games are online. Our analysis runs deeper than ever before with Stockfish and Leela, leveraging powerful neural nets and machine learning algorithms. Yet, our ratings still lag behind. If we want fairness to keep pace with progress, the time has come to modernize, and not use the same formula as in 1970.

This report is brought to you by Vlad Ghita. Vlad is a chess player, coach, content creator, and chess promoter from Romania. Since 2020 he has been involved prominently in the chess world

If each heartbeat within the confines of the playing hall tells a story, then we have 300 million stories to tell about the Chess Olympiad 2024. This is my personal account, following 12 days of intense competition, lore-building chess action at the BOK Sports Hall in Budapest, Hungary. It will differ markedly from what others have experienced, but maybe it will provide you with a glimpse into what such a competition entails from this side of the fence. My role at the Olympiad was to chase interesting storylines and speak with players, arbiters, and organizers. I am grateful to Chessdom for trusting me with this task, especially since I am more of a newcomer on the stage, and to my colleagues, with whom I have had many eye-opening exchanges during the Olympiad.

At roughly around 12:30 pm each day, I would meet arbiters at their hotel for lunch. Then we would take either the Metro or shuttle bus to the venue, and enter the building from separate entrances. Quickly catching up with my colleagues in the media room before fancily donning the media accreditation was a daily ritual between 13:30 and 14:00. Media was allowed access within the playing hall strictly from 14:00 until 25 minutes after the round had effectively started. On some days, that start was 15:00 sharp, while on others, the round started between 15:05 and 15:15. Circling around the tables for those precious 25 minutes at the beginning of each round, trying to scour the playing hall for some favorites, was always going to be a challenge on the main floor with nearly 2000 people. Then, once that interval expired, it was time to return to the media room, grab some snacks and drinks, and start writing, mostly Twitter updates. The rush hour was between 18:30 and 19:30 each day, with reporters stepping on each other’s toes to get exclusive interviews in the Mixed Zone. Our work day ended around 20:30 on average, with hangouts that extended into the next day being quite common.

Final standings open: India gold, USA Silver, Uzbekistan bronze (complete standings)

Final standings women: India gold, Kazakhstan Silver, USA bronze at the Women Chess Olympiad 2024 (complete standings)

Gaprindashvili cup: India wins ahead of USA and Armenia (final standings)

Top performer: Gukesh D with 3056 TPR

Then, there was the Olympiad itself! To say that Gukesh D has already cemented his legacy at only 18 years of age with a scintillating 3050 performance rating would be underselling the level of dominance displayed by the young Indian team. Decades after Vishy Anand – the Tiger of Madras – had first announced his arrival on the world stage, we have the Cubs of Chennai leading the charge. There are no signs of stopping with this Indian team, and their level of talent is unprecedented. While other teams could have treated the last round against Slovenia casually, having ensured team gold with a round to spare, the ruthless lineup of Gukesh D, Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Vidit went all-out and demolished the surprising Slovenian squad by a 3.5-0.5 margin. It was the perfect preview of what chess is going to look like in the next decade. Gukesh D starts as a heavy favorite in his World Championship match against Ding Liren, and most pundits expect him to win the match handily during the classical portion. That Team USA and Uzbekistan managed to secure the silver and bronze medals was hardly surprising, given the abundance of talent on both squads.

World Chess Championship info: World Chess Championship 2024 will be in Singapore / World Chess Championship 2024 is sponsored by Google / Tickets for the World Championship

In the other section, there’s the casual and unassuming brilliancy of the Indian women’s squad. Anchored by the fast-climbing Divya Deshmukh, who has just crossed 2500 on the live ratings list, India swept thru the field for the first 7 rounds, only to stumble against Poland in Round 8 and avoid disaster in the next round against USA. They righted the ship towards the end, and clinched the gold medals that were unattainable in Chennai 2022. Kudos to their entire squad, led by the experienced coach Abhijit Kunte to a deserved overall win. I watched the team’s mannerisms closely to understand where leadership originates from. While Vantika and Harika look fully focused and rarely stroll around to take a look at their teammates’ boards, Divya would sometimes lean back far in her chair, tilt her head upwards, and scan the boards with a quiet confidence. I expect her to be a mainstay at the top for at least a decade from now onwards.

Board medals: Gold for Zhu Jiner, Carissa Yip, Diviya Deshmukh, Agrawal Vantika, Dana Kochavi

Kazakhstan was one of my personal dark horse candidates for a medal and I wrote about it in one of the tournament previews. Missing two of its strongest players, Zhansaya Abdumalik and Dinara Saduakassova, but backed by strong government and private support led by Timur Turlov, the nation from Central Asia was even in contention for gold until the very last minute. What will remain immortalized is the sheer happiness on Xeniya Balabayeva’s face after making the final draw against Irina Krush and clinching silver for her squad. Later during the evening, at the end of the closing ceremony, they did exactly what you would expect a group of teenagers to do. While official photographers were lining up to capture their moment of glory, the girls found a secluded area of the playing hall and shot whimsical videos with the selfie camera on Bibisara Assaubayeva’s phone to be posted and widely reposted on Instagram later.

From team USA, Carissa Yip and Alice Lee are the kind of players who smile at you widely before the round, as captured in the official photos by FIDE, while on the board they turn into silent assassins, squeezing every little inch of the board. With a rare tactical oversight in round 11, it looked as if Alice Lee would lose a crucial encounter to IM-norm-scoring Alua Nurman of Kazakhstan. However, eventually team USA drew the match against Kazakhstan and narrowly eked out in front of Spain for the bronze medals.

Final report: India win double gold at the Olympiad

Still, it wasn’t all roses at the Olympiad. Due to heavy rains all around Central Europe, we had the Danube levels rising dangerously, at some point triggering a red warning within the city of Budapest. While this was just one of the many unusual situations at this year’s Olympiad, it pinpoints the ultimate truth, which is that we are just little pawns in nature’s game. While the Danube issue was widely circulated around social media, some remained a bit more hidden under the surface. For example, the army of volunteers, donning orange shirts, felt at times like the terracotta army in the service of an almighty emperor. In order for things to improve at future Olympiads, a minimum requirement should be fluent knowledge of English, rather than a misguided attempt to enforce dictatorial rule. Journalists should be allowed to do their job, not hounded at every step. This extends even further for security personnel at the venue.

Then, the shuttle service was a disaster. From delegations left without reliable airport transfer, to starting the rounds late because of missing buses at the agreed time, and then the iconic Magnus Carlsen riding a rental bike to the venue, the Local Organizing Committee scores extremely poorly on the logistic aspect. While most bids for a FIDE Olympiad are ranked objectively based on the proximity of official hotels to the playing venue as one of the important criteria, a bigger emphasis should be placed on the availability of appropriate transportation. It would have been far easier, and likely more enjoyable for participants, had they been provided with complimentary 15-day passes on all public transportation that Budapest has to offer. The extensive network of Metro/bus/tram lines is sufficient for all the needs of an Olympiad, and the lack of communication between the organizers and participants was frankly disappointing.

Spectator access was also underwhelming at the venue, and there was a total lack of hype surrounding an event of such magnitude. Sending people up to watch chess from the grandstands of a sports arena was fruitless. Not only were they not allowed to carry any electronic devices up there, but the distance from the players was so extreme, that even binoculars would prove to be insufficient. FIDE’s declared mission is to grow the game in its second century of existence. In order to do that, these little details have to be thought over and well-planned in advance. From picking a suitable playing venue to ensuring an enriching experience for fans who come from all corners of the world to meet their idols, this remains a big task on the shoulders of FIDE Management, together with the local organizers. Personally, I hope to be present in both Tashkent 2026 and Abu Dhabi 2028 in order to track the progress over time.

Chess Olympiad 2026 in Uzbekistan

Overall grade of the entire FIDE Chess Olympiad: B+

Competition: A

Fair-play and anti-cheating: B

Accommodation and food: B

Transportation and logistics: F

Media access: C

Expo and Fan Zone: B

Spectator flow: D

Food and drinks at the venue: C

After a 4 hour trip by train, I arrived in Budapest. Smooth check-in at the apartment, a copious lunch, and lots of walking…

Being a first-time journalist at the Chess Olympiad has its perks, but also its growing pains. First of all, I went into the wrong building for obtaining my accreditation badge. Instead of writing about chess today, I could have told you everything about the draw Hungary 0-0 Bosnia-Herzegovina. How does one make such a rookie mistake? Well, the Ferenc Puskas stadium is next to the playing hall of the Chess Olympiad, and for someone who is running low on sleep, following arrows and signs is a task more difficult than remembering lines from a Lifetime Repertoire.

In any case, mission accomplished, got the badge. The grand Opening Ceremony was set to begin in a bit over an hour and a half, on the other side of Budapest. How to get there on time, while still returning to the apartment for an outfit change? Some of the organizational flaws have been well-documented across social media, with Ivan Sokolov (team captain of Romania) giving a particularly egregious example of being overcharged by the hotel. Relying on organizer-supplied logistics, such as buses departing from the official hotels at 5 pm seemed risky, so I decided to rely on Google Maps. Thankfully, this step was easy enough, especially since I was quite familiar with the area. Nearby Hotel Bara and the ALDI supermarket have been mainstays of my yearly Hungarian chess excursion between 2021 and 2023, where by my account a grand total of +160 Elo was “farmed” across 4 events.

See: Chess Olympiad board pairings round 1 / Women Chess Olympiad board pairings round 1

Many reunions

“Fake it till you make it”

“Act like you’ve been there before”

Except…I have not, and this a dream come true. ‘Many reunions’ is the motto of the Opening Ceremony through my eyes. Right off the bat, I cordially greet GM Gergely Szabo (team captain and coach of Romania women’s) and WIM Miruna Lehaci (board 4 player). Then I exchange some friendly remarks with several of the arbiters present at the Opening Ceremony, and move on to catch up with two members of team Moldova. Fiona Steil-Antoni sits in front of me and waves enthusiastically to David Howell, situated on the far side of the right bleachers. People who had not seen each other for a while enthusiastically bond together in an atmosphere of anticipation. The energy is palpable, and I am glad to be a part of it.

The MCs arrive on the stage, but quickly depart to leave room for the speeches. First, a local politician talks about the history of Hungary’s involvement with chess and is received with lukewarm applause. Then, a musical moment, where the combination of piano and voice transports chess players into a world where the stress of losing the decisive game for your team is not going to lead to the overnight appearance of yet another 100 gray hairs, seemingly out of nowhere.

Then, Arkady Dvorkovich comes to the podium and opens by challenging the MCs assessment that one has to be “born to play chess”, insisting on its social benefits and inclusion. Dvorkovich, if not dubiously associated to the current Russian regime, could even pass as a good ambassador for the game of chess. Sadly, his ties to the Skolkovo Foundation and Dmitry Medvedev will forever taint his legacy.

More alarmingly, after campaigning for a two-term maximum limit as the FIDE President, he has walked back on his pledge, losing a lot of credibility in the face of delegates who don’t depend on FIDE’s financial support. It will be intriguing to watch what happens with the current exclusion of the Russian and Belarusian federations from sending teams to the Olympiad. The Kyrgyz Chess Federation has put up a motion that seeks to reinstate the two federations. Its proponent and federation president, Babur Tolbaev, is running for the Chairman position of the FIDE Ethics and Discipline Commission. This is the same exact commission that has publicly reprimanded Dvorkovich in a landmark decision earlier this year. The entire situation seems ironic, funny, and straight out of a Kafka novel.

Another few musical moments follow, with some players lighting up their smartphone flashlights to accompany the artists. Then, Judit Polgar enters the arena and completes the FIDE torch relay. Her sisters, Susan and Sofia, are invited to the stage alongside Chief Arbiter Ivan Syrovy to conduct the drawing of lots. Both pick black, so team USA in the open and team India in the women’s section will both start with black on their board 1.

Finally, the president of the Hungarian Chess Federation, Dr. Zoltan Polyanszky coins a quote that’s sure to stick. Wondering whether chess is art, sport, or science, he deftly quips:

“I went to the venue of the Olympiad and saw all those chess tables set there. I imagined that approximately 1,500 people would sit there in silence and full concentration, ready to give their all, and this was when I was convinced that chess is, in fact, a religion!”

The audience is clapping and tapping their feet on the rhythms of the premiere of Trojan War, the official song of the 45th Chess Olympiad performed by Rose May and Raul. The flag ceremony closes the book on the ceremony, with participants whistling and hollering when their flag is displayed on the big screen. This has been thoroughly enjoyable, but people are rushing to the exits to catch the bus that takes them back to their hotels. It’s dinner time, and then pairings for round 1.

Lots of teams remain unpaired, mostly due to visa refusals. In any case, round 1 is still under the guise of “many reunions” due to the lopsided affair that’s going to ease participants into the Olympic atmosphere. Games are on starting Sept 11th at 3 pm CEST. You can follow them right here on Chessdom!

More live (Open): Chess Olympiad 2024 live / Matches 1-26 live / Matches 26-50 live / Matches 51-75 live / Matches 75+ live / TCEC live / TCEC live 2

More live (Women): Matches 1-26 live / Matches 26-50 live / Matches 51-75 live / Matches 75+ live

More about Chess Olympaid 2024 : Participants open / Participants women / All news about Chess Olympiad 2024

This report from Budapest is brought to you by Vlad Ghita. Vlad is a chess player, coach, content creator, and chess promoter from Romania. Since 2020 he has been involved prominently in the chess world