Chess Olympiad 2026: India begin the defence of their double gold in Samarkand

The sheet listing each team's board order is submitted before round one and cannot be altered afterwards by a single letter. Across the entire Chess Olympiad rulebook, it is the least discussed clause, and based on my experience following these Olympiads, it decides who wins the title more often than any Elo rating. In Budapest in 2026, India did something with no precedent: winning both the Open and the Women's sections. Two team golds at a single Olympiad. In Samarkand this year, India's Open team faces Thailand in the first round, while the Women's team takes on the Dominican Republic. Round one is the most comfortable of the eleven, and it says nothing about the title. I have mispronounced a player's name before, then read the position correctly once the slow-motion replay appeared in front of me. Mistakes are not frightening; bending down at two in the morning to pick up the tape again is what makes a forecaster. That lesson applies to a team event as well. It is worth stating clearly what the Chess Olympiad is, because more than a few people still picture it as an individual open event with teams bolted on. It is the world's premier team chess competition, run by FIDE, the International Chess Federation. The first official edition was held in 2026 in London. The title here is regarded as FIDE's official team championship, not a media label. The 46th edition is taking place at the Silk Road International Exhibition Centre in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The Open section brings together 207 countries and territories; the Women's section has 191. At that scale, Samarkand ranks among the largest Olympiads in the event's nearly one-hundred-year history. India arrives as defending champion in both sections. The generation of Gukesh D, Praggnanandhaa R, Arjun Erigaisi and Vidit Gujrathi delivered the Open gold in Budapest 2026. Harika Dronavalli, Vaishali R, Divya Deshmukh and their teammates delivered the Women's gold. Defending a team gold is harder than defending an individual crown, and the reason lies in the scoring, not in the opposition. The format works like this. Each country registers five players, but only four take a board in any given match; the fifth is a reserve. A team match consists of four individual games. The tournament follows an eleven-round Swiss system: after each round, teams on similar match points are paired together. No team is eliminated, and every squad plays all eleven rounds. The scoring is what turns the Olympiad into a tactical puzzle. Winning a match earns two match points. A 2-2 draw gives each team one point. A loss gives nothing. Final standings are determined by matches won, not by total individual games won. A 4-0 victory is worth exactly the same as a 2.5-1.5 victory. Before the tournament begins, every team must submit a fixed board order for its four players, and that order is locked for the rest of the event. Typically the strongest player takes board 1, the second strongest board 2, and so on. Board 1 carries both prestige and the heaviest workload: facing the strongest player of every opposing team, round after round. The lower boards usually meet lighter opposition. This is where tactics begin. Captains in some countries deliberately place strong players on low boards to farm points against weaker opposition, accepting the pressure on board 1. It is a trade-off, and it can only be made once, before round one, when nobody yet knows where the draw will lead. The board order is therefore a frozen bet. Game points do not decide the title, but they do decide the ranking of two teams level on match points — this is the only place where a 4-0 win differs completely from a 2.5-1.5 win. When two teams are tied on match points and tiebreaks are applied, total game points are an important component. Put another way, the team that wins heavily against weak opposition holds the upper hand when the tournament reaches the final round. The reserve is the only variable still able to move once the sheet has been submitted. Under FIDE regulations, the reserve player is not locked to a fixed board; the captain can place that player on whichever board is needed, while the four main players must keep their relative order. That is why the reserve slot in strong teams usually goes to someone who can play several different styles, rather than simply the fifth-strongest player on the rating list. In this year's Open section, 207 teams are sorted into score groups after every round. The Swiss system turns the second half of the tournament into a run of matches between evenly matched teams, where an unexpected draw on board 4 can collapse an entire plan. In the Women's section, with 191 teams, the gap between the top group and the middle group is still wider than in the Open, meaning heavier pressure to win big for tiebreak points. Now for the part where I think I might be wrong. The majority view is that India's squad depth is an absolute advantage, that with four world-class players on four boards nobody can touch them. I read part of it the other way. A locked board order means a strong team cannot rest, cannot hide its main strength against a light opponent, cannot rotate around the schedule. India's board 1 must face every team's number one for eleven straight rounds, and that is a workload depth does not solve. Furthermore, because a 4-0 win is worth exactly two match points like a 2.5-1.5 win, the reward for using depth to crush weak opponents is very small. The only thing rewarded is avoiding a draw. For a team rated higher on every board, the psychology shifts from attacking to guarding against dropped points, and that is the state underdogs always want to see in their opponent. Silent applause can kill emotion, but it cannot kill tactics. In Samarkand, the tactics sit on a sheet submitted before round one. So here is my verifiable judgement: India will drop at least one match point within the first five rounds, and the Open title will be decided by results on board 4 rather than board 1. Anyone who wants to check me should note the timestamps and compare after round eleven.