Chess Olympiad Round 7: India’s gold chances dwindle despite win in open; women still on the hunt

Nihal Sarin and Savitha Shri (photo by Rafal Oleksiewicz and Michal Walusza for FIDE) NEW DELHI: India will look back on the loss of Nihal Sarin ahead of a rest day and wonder what could have happened if he had taken a few more minutes – he had plenty of time on the clock, more than enough to avoid the blunder that cost India their Round 6 match against Uzbekistan on Monday. When the players returned to the board for Round 7 in Samarkand on Wednesday after a day off on Tuesday, the big picture of the race for gold remained largely unchanged.Another hope of an Uzbek slide, this time at the hands of an in-form Chinese team, evaporated as the hosts won 3-1 to move a step closer to another coveted Chess Olympiad title. India’s open team also won that day, though not as comfortably as the Uzbeks.India’s opponents were England and with Dommaraju Gukesh and Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa already wrapping up victories on their boards, the fate of the team no longer rested with Nihal, which was just as well as he lost again on board 3, this time in a marathon 88-run battle against Luke McShane.McShane, playing for White, produced a stubborn, combative performance against the higher-ranked Nihal.The Englishman soon took the initiative, pushing pawns on both the queenside and the kingside, while Nihal hit back with active piece play and a dangerous-looking attack on White’s king.The position remained undecided for a long time, and with both players ticking down the clock, the game turned into a test of nerve as well as calculation.McShane held his ground, found the right defensive moves under pressure and gradually turned his rooks into more active pieces on the board.The breakthrough came with 66.Re8, pushing out a pair of rooks and sending the game into a simplified endgame. This was exactly the kind of position where McShane’s advanced f-pawn and increasingly active king took over.From there, he picked off Nihal’s pawns one by one and after nearly seven hours of playNihal resigned on move 88.As a result, Nihal suffered individual losses in a tournament where he was otherwise one of India’s most reliable players.India closed out the match with England 2.5-1.5, Praggnanandha and Gukesh’s wins outweighing Nihal’s loss and Arjun Erigaisi’s draw.This keeps India firmly in the group chasing Uzbekistan, who remain the only team with a perfect record after seven rounds, a gap that will be difficult to close with just four rounds remaining.

Savitha Shri, a strong force for India at the 2026 Chess Olympiad

If hopes of gold in the open section are fading, the Indian women’s team has given every reason to believe that theirs is still very much alive, and 19-year-old Savitha Shri is a big part of that.The Chennai-born player has now played six matches in this Olympics, winning each of them, and Wednesday’s win over Germany’s Lara Schulze followed the same pattern.After a fairly even start by Savitha. with white gradually taking control with active piece play and increasing pressure on the kingside.The position got complicated around turn 34 when she allowed a piece exchange that led to a tricky rook and knight endgame, which she navigated calmly even though Schulze found herself in serious time trouble.Savitha’s rook became increasingly active from there, picking up pawns and creating threats on both sides of the board, and although Schulze tried to defend, Savitha never allowed her king to be in real danger.In a phase that tested patience above all, when both players had little time, Savitha pushed her kingside pawns forward until 88.g6+ proved decisive, leaving Schulze unable to save her rook.He completed the grind of nearly 90 runs with a deserved victory to help India beat Germany 3.5-0.5, with Koneru Humpy and Divya Deshmukh also winning their games and Vaishali Rameshbabu drawing on Board 2.ALSO READ: Juggling Chess Olympics build-up and commentary gig in India: The flip side of America’s only GM Irina KrushOpen team India will now hope for an unlikely Uzbekistan slip and face Azerbaijan in the Round of 8 on Thursday. The women’s team, who on current form still have better medal chances than their male counterparts, take on Kazakhstan.