The 27th

Chess Olympiad The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in FIDE Onli ...

(, ''uwlimbiad al-shatranj al-27''), organized by

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( , ), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national chess federations and acts as the Spor ...

and comprising an openAlthough commonly referred to as the ''men's division'', this section is open to both male and female players. and a women's tournament, as well as several other events designed to promote the game of

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

, took place between November 14 and December 2, 1986, in

Dubai Dubai (Help:IPA/English, /duːˈbaɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''doo-BYE''; Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic: ; Emirati Arabic, Emirati Arabic: , Romanization of Arabic, romanized: Help:IPA/English, /diˈbej/) is the Lis ...

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E ...

. Once again, the Olympiad was marred by politics. With the event being held in an Arab nation, Israel couldn't participate, being in an official state of war with several Arab countries. In protest, Western European nations like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands didn't come to Dubai. Strong individual players like

Viktor Korchnoi Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi (, ; 23 March 1931 – 6 June 2016) was a Soviet (before 1976) and Swiss (after 1980) chess grandmaster (GM) and chess writer. He is considered one of the strongest players never to have become World Chess Champion. Bor ...

Robert Hübner Robert Hübner (6 November 1948 – 5 January 2025) was a German chess grandmaster, chess writer, and papyrologist. He was one of the world's leading players in the 1970s and early 1980s. Chess career At eighteen, Hübner was joint winner of t ...

, and

Eric Lobron Eric Lobron (born 7 May 1960) is a German chess grandmaster. A former two-time national champion, he has been awarded the title Grandmaster by the World Chess Federation (FIDE). Biography Born in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United ...

also stayed away. With no championship match in progress at the time, the Soviet Union was again able to field the strongest possible team, led by reigning world champion

Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born Garik Kimovich Weinstein on 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion (1985–2000), political activist and writer. His peak FIDE chess rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the ...

and ex-champion

Karpov Karpov (masculine, ) or Karpova (feminine, ) is a Russian surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Aleksandr Karpov (1917–1944), Soviet ace, double Hero of the Soviet Union * Andriy Karpov (born 1987), Ukrainian motorcyclist * Anatoly ...

. Even so, they only finished half a point ahead of England, and they only managed to capture the top spot in the last round. The United States, who had led the table after the penultimate round, had to settle for the bronze medals.

Open event

For the first time, the number of participants reached triple digits. 108 teams from 107 different nations played a 14-round

Swiss system tournament A Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format that features a fixed number of rounds of competition, but considerably fewer than for a round-robin tournament; thus each competitor (team or individual) does not play all the other ...

. In the event of a draw, the tie-break was decided first by using the

Buchholz system The Buchholz system (also spelled Buchholtz) is a ranking or scoring system developed by Bruno Buchholz (died 1958) in 1932, for Swiss system tournaments. It was originally developed as an auxiliary scoring method, but more recently it has been u ...

, then by match points. : :

Individual medals

Performance rating The PR (performance rating, P-rating, or Pentium rating) system was a figure of merit developed by AMD, Cyrix, IBM Microelectronics and SGS-Thomson in the mid-1990s as a method of comparing their x86 processors to those of rival Intel. The idea ...

Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born Garik Kimovich Weinstein on 13 April 1963) is a Russian Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion (1985–2000), political activist and writer. His peak FIDE chess Elo rating system, ra ...

2746 * Board 1:

8½ / 11 = 77.3% * Board 2: Imed Abdelnabbi 9½ / 12 = 79.2% * Board 3:

Nigel Short Nigel David Short (born 1 June 1965) is an English Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, columnist, coach and commentator who has been the FIDE Director for Chess Development since September 2022. Short earned the title of grandmaster at the ...

10 / 13 = 76.9% * Board 4: Artur Yusupov 10 / 12 = 83.3% * 1st reserve:

Luís Muñiz Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...

6 / 7 = 85.7% * 2nd reserve:

Ng Ek Teong Ng, ng, or NG may refer to: * Ng (name) (吳黄伍), (吳 being the most common), a surname of Chinese origin Arts and entertainment * N-Gage (device), a handheld gaming system * Naked Giants, Seattle rock band * '' Spirit Hunter: NG'', a vide ...

6 / 7 = 85.7%

Women's event

A total of 49 nations took part. In the event of a draw, the tie-break was decided first by using the

, then by match points. Like the open event, the women's tournament was dominated by the Soviet Union, captained by world champion Chiburdanidze, who won the gold medals by a comfortable margin. Hungary and Romania took silver and bronze, respectively. The real star of the women's event, though, was 45-year-old ex-world champion Gaprindashvili, who won all of her 10 games and finished with an uncanny performance rating of 2877 – more than 100 points better than the best male. : :

Individual medals

Nona Gaprindashvili Nona Gaprindashvili ( ka, ნონა გაფრინდაშვილი; born 3 May 1941) is a Georgian chess Grandmaster. Noted for her aggressive style of play, she was the women's world chess champion from 1962 to 1978, and in 1978 ...

2877 * Board 1: Tatjana Lematschko 9½ / 11 = 86.4% * Board 2: Faridah Karim 7 / 8 = 87.5% * Board 3:

10 / 10 = 100.0% * Reserve: Gabriela Stanciu-Olărașu 7 / 9 = 77.8%

References

27th Chess Olympiad: Dubai 1986
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