Brazil's round 3 opponents at the Chess Olympiad: how Kyrgyzstan and England play

Short answer

In round 3 of the 46th Chess Olympiad, on 18 September 2026, Brazil face Kyrgyzstan in the open section and England in the women's section. Using the classical games broadcast on Lichess over the last three years, this report shows each opponent's repertoire, the lines where each scores below their own average and where the engine finds the most mistakes, always with the sample size alongside.

Event: 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad

How this was compiled: Checked on 18 September 2026 with round 3 already under way: it started at 10:15 UTC and data collection finished at 13:23 UTC. Pairings checked on Chess-Results; line-ups, ratings and titles from the official PGN broadcast on Lichess. The repertoire uses over-the-board classical games from the last three years broadcast on Lichess, matched to each player by FIDE ID, excluding round 3 onwards of this Olympiad: 39, 30, 20 and 11 games for the four Kyrgyz players and 100, 122, 68 and 108 for the four English players. Error profiles measured with Stockfish 19 at depth 16 on each player's 12 most recent classical games. Online accounts are not included in this version. Final round 3 scores checked against the official PGN at 15:53 UTC.

The essentials in a few lines

• In round 3 of the Samarkand Olympiad, on 18 September 2026, Brazil face Kyrgyzstan in the open section and England in the women's section.
• Round 3 result: Kyrgyzstan beat Brazil 2.5-1.5 in the open section, with Timur Daudov beating Diego Di Berardino, and England won 3-1 in the women's section.
• In the open section Brazil out-rate Kyrgyzstan on every board, by 197 to 408 points; in the women's section England out-rate Brazil on all four boards, by 73 to 250 points.
• The weakest line in the sample belongs to England's Lan Yao: with White, after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6, she scored 32% in 17 games, against 56% on average with White.
• Nikita Khoroshev, Kyrgyzstan's board 2, scored 39% with Black in 14 classical games, and had Black against Alexandr Fier.
• All figures are from the opponent's point of view and show tendencies: samples range from 11 to 122 games, and error profiles use 12 games per player.

Round 3 at a glance

The two matches point in opposite directions. In the open section Brazil have the higher rating on every board, from 197 points on board 2 to 408 on board 4. In the women's section England are higher rated on all four, from 73 points on board 2 to 250 on board 4, where Elmira Mirzoeva faces Agatha Nunes.

The sample column says how much of each report holds up. Timur Daudov has 11 broadcast classical games, all since May 2026, so there is little to say about him. The English players have between 68 and 122 games each, mostly from British and European events broadcast on Lichess.

Kyrgyzstan: a board 2 who struggles with Black

Erzhan Zhakshylykov, board 1, had White against Supi. In his 21 games with White he opened 1.d4 ten times and 1.e4 eight times. The replies he scored worst against have three games each, too few to act on. With Black the picture is sharper: after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 he scored 42% in 6 games, against 67% on average with Black, and he lost all three games that reached the Breyer.

Nikita Khoroshev, board 2, plays like two different players depending on colour. With White he scored 59% in 16 games; with Black, 39% in 14, with 5 wins, 1 draw and 8 losses. Against 1.e4 that was 7 games and 36%. In round 3 he had Black, and Fier opened 1.e4.

Ruslan Sezdbekov, board 3, is the reverse: 7 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss in his 10 games with White. He splits evenly between 1.d4 and 1.e4, and won all five games with 1.d4. Diamant, with Black, got the 1.e4.

Timur Daudov, board 4, has 11 classical games, all since May 2026. With White he always opened 1.d4. We do not publish his error profile: besides the small sample, one of the 11 games has a broadcast error. In round 1 of this Olympiad the PGN records 11...Rd8 with no recapture on d7, and White's queen only leaves the board on move 16.

Eldiyar Orozbaev, who played rounds 1 and 2, rests. With 85 games he has the largest sample in the Kyrgyz team.

England: where the sample is large

Lan Yao, board 2, has the most solid weak line in the sample. With White, after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6, she scored 32% in 17 games: 2 wins, 7 draws and 8 losses, against 56% on average with White. The flip side is the Sicilian. Against 1...c5 she played 20 games, winning 13 and losing only 2.

Jovanka Houska, board 3, meets 1.e4 with the Caro-Kann in all 25 games. In the 2.d4 d5 main line she scored 41% in 17, against 53% on average with Black. Against 2.Nc3 the sample has only two games, and she won both.

Bodhana Sivanandan, board 1, opened 1.e4 in all 54 of her games with White. With Black she scored 41% in 46 games, and her low point is the Slav with 3.Nf3: 25% in 10 games. Against 1.e4 she nearly always answers 1...e5, in 17 of 21 games, but the sample includes 4 Caro-Kanns.

Elmira Mirzoeva, board 4, is a 1.d4 player: 26 of her 53 games with White, plus 17 with 1.Nf3. After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 she scored 46% in 13 games, against 60% on average with White. There are only 6 games with 1.e4.

Harriet Hunt, who played rounds 1 and 2, rests.

Where the engine finds the mistakes

The table shows average centipawn loss per move, ACPL, in each phase. In the opening everyone sits between 4 and 10, which says more about preparation than about play. The differences come later.

With 12 games per player, ACPL compares one player's phases with each other; it does not rank players. A five-point gap between two names in the table proves nothing. Zhakshylykov goes from 9 in the opening to 25 in the endgame, over 150 endgame moves. Mirzoeva reaches 48 in the endgame, over 155 moves. Houska has 38 in the endgame, but over only 85 moves.

Blunder counts are left out. When a player who is already winning picks a slower mate, the blunder threshold records a huge loss for a move that changes nothing. ACPL caps every evaluation at a thousand centipawns and does not suffer from this.

What round 3 showed

The round ended with two Brazilian defeats. In the open section Kyrgyzstan won 2.5-1.5: Luis Paulo Supi, Alexandr Fier and André Diamant drew, and Timur Daudov, who has the smallest sample in the report and was rated 408 points lower, beat Diego Di Berardino on board 4. In the women's section England won 3-1. Kathie Librelato beat Jovanka Houska in the Caro-Kann with 2.Nc3; Juliana Terao, Julia Alboredo and Agatha Nunes lost, Alboredo in the Sicilian, the defence Lan Yao had scored 77% against in 20 games.

The first version of this report went out with the round in progress, when the openings were already known. In the women's match no Brazilian went into her opponent's weak line, and that is not necessarily a mistake. The report measures where the opponent scores less, not what the Brazilian plays well. Steering a game into the other side's weak line only pays when the line also suits the player choosing it, and an opponent's statistics cannot show that.

In the open match Zhakshylykov opened 1.d4 and Supi answered with the King's Indian. Fier chose the Anti-Berlin against Khoroshev, starting with 1.e4, the move Khoroshev scored 36% against in 7 games. Diamant met Sezdbekov's 1.e4 with the Sicilian, and Di Berardino played the Queen's Gambit against Daudov, who accepted it.

Frequently asked questions

Update log

• 2026-09-18 — First published with round 3 in progress: repertoire from the classical games broadcast on Lichess and error profiles with Stockfish 19 at depth 16, without online accounts.
• 2026-09-18 — Republished with the final round 3 scores and an interactive report for each opponent in the line-up, comparing the round 3 game with the known repertoire.
• 2026-09-29 — The Olympiad ended on 27 September: Uzbekistan won the open and China the women's event. This coverage is no longer updated; the final result is in the standings story.

Sources

• 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad Samarkand 2026 | Open — round 3, matches 13-37 (PGN with line-ups) — Lichess
• 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad Samarkand 2026 | Women — round 3, matches 1-25 (PGN with line-ups) — Lichess
• Erzhan Zhakshylykov — broadcasts under FIDE ID 13804111 — Lichess
• 46th Chess Olympiad Samarkand 2026, Open — round 3 pairings — Chess-Results

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