The FIDE Online Chess Olympiad 2020 was an

online chess Online chess is chess that is played over the Internet, allowing players to play against each other. This was first done asynchronously through PLATO and email in the 1970s. In 1992, the Internet Chess Server facilitated live online play via t ...

tournament organised by the

Fédération Internationale des Échecs 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 go ...

(FIDE) and hosted by

Chess.com Chess.com is an internet chess server and social networking website. One of the largest chess platforms in the world, the site operates on a freemium model in which some features are available for free, and others are available via subscription ...

. It was held between 24 July and 30 August. The event was organised after the

44th Chess Olympiad The 44th Chess Olympiad was an international team chess event organised by the FIDE, International Chess Federation (FIDE) in Chennai, India, from 28 July to 10 August 2022. It consisted of two main tournaments—an Open event, enabling partic ...

was postponed due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. The final match between Russia and India was called off after several Indian team members experienced connectivity issues due to a global outage of

Cloudflare Cloudflare, Inc., is an American company that provides content delivery network services, cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, wide area network services, reverse proxies, Domain Name Service, ICANN-accredited domain registration, and other se ...

servers; Russia and India were subsequently declared joint winners. The

second edition The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Un ...

of the tournament was held in 2021.

Participating teams

Medalists

Gazprom Brilliancy Prize

Gazprom PJSC Gazprom ( rus, Газпром, , ɡɐsˈprom) is a Russian State-owned enterprise, majority state-owned multinational Energy industry, energy corporation headquartered in the Lakhta Center in Saint Petersburg. The Gazprom name is a contract ...

sponsored a brilliancy prize for the event, with the judges being 14 popular streamers and YouTubers: Anna Cramling, Maria Emelianova,

Jesse February Jesse February (born 1997) is a South African chess player who holds the title of Woman International Master (WIM, 2016). She is a two-time South African women's chess champion and has also won the African women's chess championship twice, in ...

Anna-Maja Kazarian Anna-Maja Kazarian (born 7 January 2000) is a Dutch chess player and Twitch (service), Twitch live streamer who holds the FIDE titles, titles of FIDE Master (FM) and Woman International Master (WIM). She was the 2020 Dutch Women's Internet Chess ...

, Daniel King, Ayelen Martinez, Carlos Matamoros Franco,

Daniel Naroditsky Daniel Naroditsky (born November 9, 1995), often referred to as Danya, is an American chess grandmaster, author, and commentator. Chess career Born in San Mateo, California, Naroditsky learned chess at age six from his father. He was soon taki ...

Antonio Radić Antonio Radić (born 16 June 1987), better known as agadmator (), is a Croatian YouTuber and chess player. He has one of the most popular chess channels on YouTube, and was the most subscribed chess YouTuber from 2018 to late 2021, when he was su ...

, Michael Rahal, IM Eric Rosen,

Sagar Shah Sagar Shah (born 28 January 1990) is an Indian chess player, journalist, commentator, and YouTuber who holds the title of International Master (IM). He co-founded ChessBase India in late 2015 with his wife Amruta Mokal. Professionally a chart ...

and Amruta Mokal (joint submission), Fiona Steil-Antoni, and Simon Williams. Nine of the games that were presented to the judges received votes, with the game totaling the most votes being Danyyil Dvirnyy–

Alexei Shirov Alexei Shirov (, ; born 4 July 1972) is a Latvian and Spanish chess player. Shirov was ranked number two in the world in 1994. He won a match against Vladimir Kramnik in 1998 to qualify to play as challenger for the classical world championshi ...

; Shirov, in the

Slav Defense The Slav Defense is a chess opening that begins with the moves: :1. d4 d5 :2. c4 c6 The Slav is one of the primary defenses to the Queen's Gambit. Although it was analyzed as early as 1590, it was not until the 1920s that it started to be ...

, executed a decisive

queenside This glossary of chess explains commonly used terms in chess, in alphabetical order. Some of these terms have their own pages, like ''fork'' and ''pin''. For a list of unorthodox chess pieces, see Fairy chess piece; for a list of terms specific t ...

attack involving a

queen sacrifice In chess, a queen sacrifice is a move that sacrifices a queen, the most powerful piece, in return for some compensation, such as a tactical or positional advantage. Queen sacrifice: real versus sham In his book ''The Art of Sacrifice in Ches ...

References

External links

* {{Online chess events, state=expanded Chess Olympiads 2020 in chess Chess.com competitions