How Uzbekistan won the 2026 Chess Olympiad: board three, Abdusattorov against Caruana and the final-round 33.b4

Short answer

Uzbekistan won the open section of the Samarkand Olympiad with 20 match points, 10 wins and 1 loss. This analysis goes through all eleven matches from the official PGN, shows that the three matches against direct rivals were decided on board three, measures with the engine the moves that decided Abdusattorov–Caruana in round 9 and Dehtiarov's 33.b4 against Madaminov in the final round, and explains the only defeat, to the Germany of the Svane brothers.

Event: 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad

How this was compiled: Checked on 29 September 2026, with the Olympiad over on 27 September. Moves, results and clock times come from the official PGN broadcast on Lichess; match scores and performances from chess-results. Evaluations measured with Stockfish 19 at depth 24, one dedicated search per position (Threads=1, 256 MB hash, cleared for each position); the automatic annotation on Lichess was not used. Clock times quoted are what the clock showed after the move, including the 30-second increment.

The essentials in a few lines

• Uzbekistan scored 20 match points out of 22 and 32.5 game points out of 44; the only loss was to Germany, 1.5–2.5, in round 8.
• Nodirbek Yakubboev, on board three, scored 7.5 out of 10 and won the decisive game in the matches against India (Nihal Sarin), China (Yu Yangyi) and the USA (Hans Niemann).
• Nodirbek Abdusattorov played all 11 rounds, scored 8.5 without a loss and had a 2869 performance, the board-one gold; he beat Rapport, Ding Liren, Caruana and Martirosyan.
• Against Caruana, the game was level until move 38. With about a minute on the clock, Black got worse in three moves: 38...Kf8 (+0.77), 39...a5 (+1.04) and 40...Rxb3 (+4.41), when 40...Rh3+ kept +0.91.
• In the final round, Madaminov beat Dehtiarov on board four after 33.b4?, a move that takes the evaluation from −0.38 to −3.76; with India drawing, a 2–2 would already have secured gold.

Eleven matches, one defeat

An Olympiad campaign is usually told through the landslides, because those are what make the headlines. This one is better understood through the narrow scores. Against teams that finished in the top twelve there were six wins (Hungary, India, China, the USA, Armenia and Ukraine), and three of them were 2.5–1.5, the smallest score that still earns 2 match points. Each depended on a single decisive game, and the table shows whose it was.

The team played with five names: Abdusattorov on board one, Sindarov on two, Yakubboev on three, and Vokhidov and Madaminov sharing the remaining place. Abdusattorov played every round; the others rested once or more. In total they scored 32.5 game points, the highest total in the open.

Board three decided the big matches

The usual reasoning in a four-board team is that board one holds off the strongest opponents and the lower boards collect the points. In the three matches that decided the gold, Uzbekistan did the opposite. Against India, the other three games were drawn, and the only full point came from Yakubboev's win over Nihal Sarin, in a 54-move Queen's Gambit Declined.

Against China, Abdusattorov beat Ding Liren and Yakubboev beat Yu Yangyi, and the other two boards were drawn. Against the USA, the match had three decisive games: Abdusattorov beat Caruana, Sindarov lost to So, and the tie was broken by Yakubboev, who beat Niemann in a 66-move Nimzo-Indian. Turn his win against India or against the USA into a draw and the match ends 2–2: one match point fewer in each case, in an Olympiad won by a margin of two.

None of this diminishes board one. It says something else, more useful to anyone picking a team: an Olympiad side wins when the opponent does not know where the point is coming from. Against Uzbekistan, rivals had to stop Abdusattorov and Sindarov on the top two boards, and the point came from board three.

Abdusattorov against Caruana: level until the clock ran out

The opening was 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nc6 4.d3 Bb4 5.Bg5, a quiet line in which White trades bishop for knight and accepts doubled pawns on c3 after 6.Bxf6 Bxc3+ 7.bxc3. Caruana spent 23 minutes on move 11 alone and almost an hour between moves 11 and 17; Abdusattorov spent 35 minutes on move 15 alone. Neither found an advantage: at move 38, with the rook ending already on the board, the engine measures +0.02.

The ending arrived on move 34, with doubled rooks on each side and pawns on both wings. At 37...Rd3 Caruana had 1min33s and still seven moves to the control. 38...Kf8 passed up the trade 38...Rxe3, which kept the balance, and gave the white rook the road to e7. 39...a5 passed up the same trade a second time. And 40...Rxb3, played with 40 seconds left, wins a pawn and lets the white king walk in via g5 and g6 against a black king stuck on the back rank.

Caruana's clock gained 30 minutes after move 40, and by then the position was lost on the engine's measurement. Abdusattorov gave back a rook with 44.Rxg7+ Kxg7 45.Re7+ Kg8 and won it back with 46.Kxf6, his king already settled among the black pawns. Chess.com recorded the Uzbek's words on the title: gold at home was "the proudest moment in my life".

The defeat to Germany

It is the same logic as the previous section, seen from the other side. Germany did not stop Abdusattorov, nor Sindarov, who beat Bluebaum with White. They won where Uzbekistan had been winning: on the two bottom boards. The Svane brothers won both games, and Frederik did it with White in a 29-move Sicilian against the player who had decided the matches with India and China.

The defeat did not cost Uzbekistan the lead: after eight rounds they had 14 match points, the same as Germany, and won the three remaining matches. Germany lost to India in round 9 and finished on 18, bronze on tiebreak. The head-to-head is not an Olympiad criterion, which is why beating the champions did not put Germany above India.

The final round and 33.b4

Uzbekistan started round 11 on 18 match points, India on 17 and Germany on 16. A loss to Ukraine with India beating Hungary would have handed the title to India; a draw with the same Indian win would have sent it to the tiebreak. The games on the top three boards were long and ended drawn; the point came from the player who had scored 4.5 out of 6 until then.

Madaminov's game was a Ruy Lopez with 5.d3 that reached a rook ending with Black slightly better, −0.38 on our measurement. Dehtiarov played 33.b4 with 6min47s, against Madaminov's 25 minutes. The move takes a pawn off a safe square and opens the way for the black king to d5 and the rook to g4 and g2. The engine only accepts 33.Re5, which keeps the rook active on the fifth rank. Madaminov finished the Olympiad on 5.5 out of 7, unbeaten.

Frequently asked questions

Update log

• 2026-09-29 — First published: Uzbekistan's eleven matches read from the official PGN and the decisive positions measured with Stockfish 19.

Sources

• 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad Samarkand 2026 | Open — round 9 (PGN with clock times) — Lichess
• 46th Chess Olympiad 2026 Open — final standings — chess-results
• Uzbekistan, China Win 2026 Samarkand Chess Olympiad — Chess.com
• Uzbekistan's dream finish: Olympiad gold in Samarkand — FIDE

Related guides

• How to avoid time trouble in chess: five rules for the last three minutes
• Rook endgames with an extra pawn: what decides between the win and the draw
• Corporate chess leagues: what changes when the point belongs to the team