Brazil at the Samarkand Olympiad: a 4-0 women's win and a 2-2 draw with Botswana in the open

Short answer

In round 1 of the 46th Chess Olympiad on 16 September 2026, Brazil's women beat Mauritania 4-0 and Brazil's open team drew 2-2 with Botswana, the 133rd seed. This report gives board-by-board results for both matches, uses engine measurements to show where Alexandr Fier and Roberto Molina lost, explains what the draw costs in the standings and lists the round 2 opponents.

Event: 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad

How this was compiled: Checked on 17 September 2026, with round 2 in progress and no results yet. Line-ups, scores, ratings and clock times for round 1 (16 September) come from the official PGN broadcast on Lichess; seedings from Chess.com's coverage. Evaluations measured with Stockfish 19 at depth 24, one dedicated search per position (Threads=1, 256 MB hash, cleared between positions). Clock times are those shown after the move.

The essentials in a few lines

• In round 1 of the Samarkand Olympiad on 16 September 2026, Brazil beat Mauritania 4-0 in the women's section and drew 2-2 with Botswana in the open; a match win is worth 2 match points and a draw 1.
• In the open, GM Luis Paulo Supi rested. IM Providence Oatlhotse (2230) beat GM Alexandr Fier (2537) on board 1, and Mogotsi Arnold Mothudi (1914, no FIDE title) beat IM Roberto Molina (2390) on board 4; GM André Diamant and IM Diego Di Berardino won on boards 2 and 3.
• Fier was lost with more than an hour on his clock: 14...Qc5, 15...fxe4 and 18...Qe7 took the evaluation from +0.01 to +5.33 for White, measured with Stockfish 19 at depth 24.
• Molina reached +1.77 and lost with 3:23 on his clock: 34.R7xc3 held the balance (0.00), while 34.Rd7 left the rook trapped after 34...Bc8 (−6.71).
• In round 2, on 17 September, Brazil face Trinidad and Tobago in the open and Jamaica in the women's section.

Round 1 at a glance

On the starting list the gap between the two open teams was one of the widest of the round: Brazil came in as the 31st seed and Botswana as the 133rd, according to Chess.com. By rating, Brazil's four boards added up to 9902 points against 8132, an average of 442 points more per board.

The regulations count matches, not games: a win is worth 2 match points and a draw 1. The 2-2 leaves Brazil on 1 match point after round 1, while every team that won, by any score, has 2. In a Swiss system that means dropping into the lower score group, where the team tends to meet lower-rated opposition.

Supi is the team's top board by rating, and his absence moved Fier to board 1, Diamant to 2, Di Berardino to 3 and Molina to 4. In the same round, India made the same choice with Praggnanandhaa.

Board 1: Fier's mistakes with an hour on the clock

The game began as a Queen's Gambit Declined in which Black took on c4 and White replied with e4, an open, tactical structure. Up to move 14 the engine saw nothing between the sides. Black's most ambitious move, 12...f5, measures +0.10 and commits nothing on its own; the trouble came afterwards, with the queen heading to c5 and the f-file opened before Black had castled.

What separates this loss from Molina's is the clock. Fier played 18...Qe7 with 1:06:50 available, while Oatlhotse spent 25 minutes on his reply, 19.d6, and reached move 41 with 55 seconds. The Botswana player was far shorter of time than his opponent and still converted a position that had been decided by move 18.

Board 4: Molina's trapped rook

The opening was the structure White chooses to play without risk: exchange on d5, bishop to g5, slow development and pressure down the c-file. Between moves 24 and 29 the evaluation stayed between +1.1 and +1.8 for Molina. The cost showed on the clock: 17.Qd1 took about 21 minutes and 24.Qc1 another 18. After 33.Nfd4 he had 4:49 left, and the advantage had already gone with 30.Ne2 and 32.a4.

With the position level, the rook on c7 had two options. Taking the knight on c3 simplified and kept the balance. 34.Rd7 avoids the exchange and keeps the rook active on the seventh rank, exactly the kind of move you play while your head is still on winning. After 34...Bc8 the rook has no safe square: c7 and d6 are covered by Black's queen, d8 and e7 by the rook on e8, and the d5 pawn is defended by the knight on c3. The 1914-rated Botswana player found the move.

The 476-point gap makes this the fourth-largest upset by rating among the decisive open-section games broadcast on Lichess in round 1. It follows the same pattern as Arjun Erigaisi's loss that day: an advantage, then equality, then an active move with three minutes left.

Women's section: a clean 4-0

The rating gap was far wider than in the open: Mauritania's four players were rated between 1497 and 1609, and none held a FIDE title. The score was the expected one, and the Olympiad has many rounds like this: according to Chess.com, nine of the top ten women's seeds won 4-0 on the first day.

Comparisons between Brazil's two teams should be read with that in mind. The women's 4-0 does not prove a better approach than the open team's, and the open 2-2 does not prove the opposite: the opponents were at different levels. What the women's match shows is an opening round without waste, with all four games decided before move 51.

Round 2: Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica

In the open, Supi returns on board 1, followed by Fier, Diamant and Di Berardino, with Molina resting. In the women's section, Terao, Alboredo, Librelato and Agatha Hurba Nunes keep the same line-up as in round 1. Both teams are rating favourites on every board.

What follows is our reading. After a surprising draw, the danger in the next round is rarely the opponent: it is the urge to make up for the last result with a big win. Brazil's two losses on 16 September already show what that costs. One came from ambitious moves made too early in a level position; the other from an active move in a position that called for simplification.

Frequently asked questions

Update log

• 2026-09-17 — First published with round 2 in progress: round 1 scores and clock times from the official PGN, evaluations measured with Stockfish 19 at depth 24.
• 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 1, matches 13-37 (PGN with clock times) — Lichess
• 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad Samarkand 2026 | Women — round 1 (PGN with clock times) — Lichess
• 2026 Chess Olympiad Round 1: Thai IM Upsets Indian Number-2 As Favorites Prevail — Chess.com
• Samarkand Olympiad Day 1: Favourites, fireworks and a shock — FIDE

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