Canada's round 3 opponents at the Chess Olympiad: how Serbia's two teams play

Short answer

In round 3 of the 46th Chess Olympiad, on 18 September 2026, Canada face Serbia in both the open and the women's sections. Using the classical games broadcast on Lichess over the last three years, this report shows each Serbian player'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 14:04 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: 72, 77, 155 and 150 games for the four Serbian open-section players and 34, 68, 81 and 110 for the four Serbian women. 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, Canada face Serbia in both sections: match 15 in the open and match 13 in the women's.
• Round 3 result: Serbia beat Canada 2.5-1.5 in both sections; in the open, Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux beat Alexey Sarana.
• Serbia are higher rated on every board: by 117 to 150 points in the open section and by 117 to 212 in the women's section.
• Alexey Sarana, Serbia's board 1, scored 63% with Black overall but 50% in 8 games of the open Najdorf, which Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux chose against him in round 3.
• Elif Mehmed scored 38% against 1.d4 in 17 games with Black, against 62% versus 1.e4; Svitlana Demchenko opened 1.d4 against her.
• All figures are from the opponent's point of view and show tendencies: samples range from 34 to 155 games, and error profiles use 12 games per player.

Round 3 at a glance

Serbia are the higher-rated side on all eight boards. In the open section the gaps are narrow and even, from 117 points on board 2 to 150 on board 4. In the women's section they run from 117 on board 2 to 212 on board 4, where Jovana Srdanović faces Oksana Golubeva.

Every Serbian player has a usable sample. The smallest belongs to Teodora Injac, women's board 1, with 34 classical games, all since March 2026.

Serbia's open team: few holes, and one of them on board 1

Alexey Sarana, board 1, lost only 1 of his 34 games with White and scored 63% with Black. Against 1.e4 he played the Sicilian in 16 of 22 games. His weakest line is the open Najdorf, 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6: 2 wins, 4 draws and 2 losses in 8 games, 50%. Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux went into it, with 6.Bc4.

Aleksandar Indjić, board 2, had White against Atanasov. With 1.d4 he scored 76% in 23 games, with 1 loss. After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 he has 6 games and 4 wins, and Atanasov chose exactly that, with the Nimzo-Indian. Indjić is much weaker with Black, 47% in 36 games, but that did not come into play in round 3.

Alexandr Predke, board 3, has the largest sample on the team, 155 games. With Black he scored 54% in 80, and three lines sit clearly below that: the French with 2.d4 d5, 25% in 6 games; the Queen's Gambit Declined, 38% in 8; and the Italian, 42% in 6. Razvan Preotu opened 1.Nf3 instead, which Predke has faced 7 times, answering 1...Nf6 in 6 of them. This time he replied 1...c5.

Velimir Ivić, board 4, is a 1.e4 player: 49 of his 74 games with White. After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 he scored 57% in 29 games, against 69% on average with White, the weak line with the largest sample in the Serbian open team. Against Sai Krishna G V he opened 1.d4, which he has played 13 times, with 8 wins and 1 loss.

Bojan Maksimović, who played rounds 1 and 2, rests.

Serbia's women: a board 3 who struggles against 1.d4

Elif Mehmed, board 3, has the clearest split in the women's team. With Black she faced 1.e4 in 20 games and scored 62%. Against 1.d4 it was 17 games and 38%: 3 wins, 7 draws and 7 losses. Svitlana Demchenko opened 1.d4.

Alina Bivol, board 2, opened 1.e4 in 34 of her 35 games with White and scored 70% overall. Her weakest line is 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6, 42% in 6 games. Against 1...e5 she scored 78% in 9 games without a loss. Yunshan Li answered 1...e5, and the game went into an Anti-Berlin.

Jovana Srdanović, board 4, is a 1.d4 player: 52 of 55 games with White. Her weak lines all start with 1.d4: the two with the most games are 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3, 50% in 8 games, and the Nimzo-Indian, 50% in 7, against 65% on average with White. Against Oksana Golubeva she opened 1.c4, a move she has played three times in the sample.

Teodora Injac, board 1, has 34 classical games, all since March 2026, 17 with each colour. With Black she scored 41%, and 36% against 1.e4 in 7 games. Maili-Jade Ouellet opened 1.d4, which Injac has faced four times, with 1 win and 3 losses. Sofia Pogorelskikh, 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 9, which says more about preparation than about play. Sarana's figures stay low across 683 measured moves, so this sample does not point to a long endgame as the place to outlast him. Mehmed's endgame figure, 8 over 176 moves, is the reverse of her middlegame one.

With 12 games per player, ACPL compares one player's phases with each other; it does not rank players, and a five-point gap between two names proves nothing.

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

Serbia won both matches 2.5-1.5. In the open section Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux beat Alexey Sarana in the open Najdorf, the line where Sarana had scored 50% in 8 games, and Sai Krishna G V drew with Velimir Ivić; Anthony Atanasov and Razvan Preotu lost. In the women's section Maili-Jade Ouellet, Yunshan Li and Oksana Golubeva drew, and Svitlana Demchenko lost to Elif Mehmed after opening 1.d4, the move Mehmed had scored 38% against in 17 games.

The round 3 openings show preparation running in both directions. Two Canadians aimed at the places where their opponent has scored less. Two Serbians left the first move they play most, and with it the lines where the report finds them weakest. A scouting report can be read from both sides of the board.

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
• Alexey Sarana — broadcasts under FIDE ID 24133795 — Lichess
• 46th Chess Olympiad Samarkand 2026, Open — round 3 pairings — Chess-Results

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