USA's round 3 opponents at the Chess Olympiad: how Denmark and Cuba play

Short answer

In round 3 of the 46th Chess Olympiad, on 18 September 2026, the United States face Denmark in the open section and Cuba 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 13:30 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: 112, 53, 134 and 51 games for the four Danish players and 48, 48, 62 and 12 for the four Cuban 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, the United States face Denmark on match 1 of the open section and Cuba on match 5 of the women's section.
• Round 3 result: the US beat Denmark 2.5-1.5 in the open section and Cuba 3.5-0.5 in the women's section.
• The US team is higher rated on every board: by 174 to 215 points in the open section and by 98 to 211 in the women's section.
• Denmark's Mads Andersen scored 70% with White overall but 50% in 6 games after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3, the line Hans Niemann chose against him in round 3.
• Cuba's Yerisbel Miranda Llanes scored 74% with White overall but 50% in 8 games of the Queen's Gambit Declined, which Alice Lee entered in round 3.
• All figures are from the opponent's point of view and show tendencies: samples range from 12 to 134 games, and error profiles use 12 games per player.

Round 3 at a glance

The US team is favoured on all eight boards. In the open section the gaps run from 174 points on board 1 to 215 on board 4. In the women's section the narrowest is board 3, where Tatev Abrahamyan is 98 points above Yaniela Forgas Moreno, and the widest is board 1, where Carissa Yip is 211 above Maritza Arribas Robaina.

The Danish team has large samples, from 51 to 134 games per player. Cuba's board 4, Ineymig Hernández Gil, has only 12, so little is said about her here.

Denmark: a 1.e4 player who opened 1.c4

Jonas Buhl Bjerre, board 1, had White against Caruana. In 56 games with White he opened 1.e4 in 48, 1.Nf3 in 4 and 1.d4 in 3. There is not a single 1.c4 in the sample, and that is what he played in round 3. It is the clearest case in this round of what a scouting report cannot do: it describes what a player has done, and a player facing Caruana on board 1 of the Olympiad prepares precisely not to repeat it.

Jesper Søndergaard Thybo, board 2, scored 61% with Black in 27 games, and he is at his most comfortable against 1.e4: 13 games, 8 wins, 3 draws, 2 losses, almost always with 1...e5. The move he scored worst against was 1.Nf3, 40% in 5 games. Wesley So opened 1.e4 anyway, reached a Giuoco Piano, and won.

Mads Andersen, board 3, scored 70% in 67 games with White. The exception is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3, with 1 win, 4 draws and 1 loss in 6 games, 50%. Hans Niemann went into exactly that line, with 3...d5 4.g3 Bb4+, and won. With Black, Andersen's weakest line is 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6: 30% in 10 games, with no wins.

Bjørn Møller Ochsner, board 4, scored 75% with White and 48% with Black. Against 1.e4 he has 11 games with Black and 27%: 2 wins, 2 draws, 7 losses. Awonder Liang opened 1.c4, a move Ochsner has faced three times in the sample.

Filip Boe Olsen, who played rounds 1 and 2, rests.

Cuba: strong with White, softer against 1.e4

Maritza Arribas Robaina, board 1, is steady with White, 70% in 23 games, and far weaker against 1.e4 with Black: 33% in 12 games, with 1 win, 6 draws and 5 losses. Her French with 2.d4 d5 went 0 wins, 3 draws and 3 losses. Carissa Yip opened 1.e4, got the French, sidestepped 2.d4 with 2.d3, and won.

Yerisbel Miranda Llanes, board 2, opened 1.d4 in 24 of 25 games with White and scored 74% overall. In the Queen's Gambit Declined, 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6, she scored 50% in 8 games. Alice Lee entered it, with 3.Nc3 Bb4.

Yaniela Forgas Moreno, board 3, scored 66% with Black in 29 games. Against 1.e4 she played the Sicilian in 14 of 16 games. Against Tatev Abrahamyan she chose 1...c6, a reply that appears at most twice in the sample. With White she is a Bird player: 1.f4 in 17 of her 33 games.

Ineymig Hernández Gil, board 4, has 12 classical games in the sample, eight of them with White. It is too little for a weak line or a game plan. Roxangel Obregón García, who played round 1, 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. Ochsner's endgame figure rests on 243 moves, the largest endgame sample in the table. Yaniela Forgas Moreno's 22 in the endgame rests on only 40 moves, and Ineymig Hernández Gil's 58 comes from the only 12 games she has in the sample.

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

The US won both matches. In the open section they beat Denmark 2.5-1.5: Wesley So and Hans Niemann won, Fabiano Caruana drew with Jonas Buhl Bjerre, and Awonder Liang lost to Bjørn Møller Ochsner after opening 1.c4. In the women's section they beat Cuba 3.5-0.5: Carissa Yip, Tatev Abrahamyan and Alice Lee won, Lee in Yerisbel Miranda Llanes's Queen's Gambit Declined, and Rose Atwell drew.

The two cases pull in opposite directions, and both are worth keeping. Niemann's win came in Andersen's weak line, but one game does not confirm a 6-game statistic any more than Bjerre's 1.c4 refutes a 56-game one. What the report measures is where a player has scored less. What the player does on the day depends on who is sitting opposite.

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 1-12 (PGN with line-ups) — Lichess
• 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad Samarkand 2026 | Women — round 3, matches 1-25 (PGN with line-ups) — Lichess
• Jonas Buhl Bjerre — broadcasts under FIDE ID 1444948 — Lichess
• 46th Chess Olympiad Samarkand 2026, Women — round 3 pairings — Chess-Results

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