Olympiad Round 5 Open: Germany beat the top seeds, and Samarkand gets its showdown

Upsets of the Olympiad: Open Round 5

These are the ten largest rating upsets from 49 qualifying games. Draws, forfeits and games involving an unrated player are excluded.

The IMSC test is unchanged: a completed decisive game counts only when a player with a published numeric rating beats a higher-rated opponent.

View every Open Round 5 game, sorted by rating upset →

Eight teams sat down on a perfect score. Three got up that way, and the top seeds were not among them.

Germany beat the United States with one win and three draws, and two of the draws came quickly. Vincent Keymer and Fabiano Caruana reached a perfectly symmetrical position by move 20 and repeated, while Alexander Donchenko's sharp sacrificial line against Levon Aronian burned out into a 26-move repetition. That left the match resting on Frederik Svane against Hans Niemann, and Svane was on familiar ground: he had played the same first fifteen moves against Michael Adams in the Bundesliga in 2022, in a game he rates as probably his best ever. Niemann dropped a pawn, and when the moment came Svane played 27.Nc5!! at speed. Wesley So still had a route back for the Americans, but Matthias Bluebaum had given up his queen and built a rook-and-two-pawns fortress that So could not break. Germany's captain Jan Gustafsson admitted he had been pretending to read a book until Svane's win calmed his nerves. The fifth seeds won 2.5-1.5, and Svane's game was a rating upset in its own right: at 2655 he was 70 points below Niemann.

Uzbekistan were less subtle. Richard Rapport and Peter Leko were both late to the board, and Rapport's 17.g4? handed Nodirbek Abdusattorov a pawn he never gave back. Benjamin Gledura's aggressive opening backfired against Nodirbek Yakubboev, who has now crossed 2700 on the live list, and Leko and Gleb Dudin, needing to win with Black, were ground down in rook endings by Javokhir Sindarov and Shamsiddin Vokhidov. Four-nil, and the 2022 champions go top on tiebreak.

India's win was shakier and far more dramatic. Anish Giri had won all four of his games, and his sacrifice on h3 threw the top board into chaos. He then offered Praggnanandhaa a draw. Pragg, held to three draws by lower-rated opponents earlier in the week, turned it down and came out on top in the time scramble before move 40. Gukesh finished the job on board four, meeting Erwin l'Ami's 23.f4? with 23...c3! to move to 4.5/5, while Arjun Erigaisi and Nihal Sarin drew with Jorden van Foreest and Loek van Wely. India 3, Netherlands 1.

The last meeting of leaders ended in four draws between China and Armenia, and produced the day's second queen-sacrifice fortress: Haik Martirosyan gave up his queen, Ding Liren found a late trick, and the position still held. Behind them, 23rd-seeded Romania held Azerbaijan 2-2 with Daniel Bogdan-Deac beating Shakhriyar Mamedyarov on top board, and Tajikistan, seeded 61st, beat Slovenia 2.5-1.5.

Forty-nine games met the IMSC test, the most of the tournament, and the table is starting to have regulars. Cambodia's Sanker Kim tops it for the second time in three rounds: rated 1583, he beat Togo's Kodjovi Folly Corazon Doumassi by 382 points, two rounds after his 580-point win over Ali Ehsan Aryan. Albania's Aleksander Xhembulla, who beat Ilia Smirin in Round 2, was on the wrong end of one this time against Hong Kong's Ho Cheung Wong. Wales lost two games to lower-rated Saudi Arabian players in the same match. Saudi Arabia won it 2.5-1.5, and both of their lower-rated winners appear in the top ten. And the tenth entry shows how far up the rating scale the upsets have climbed: Colombia's Esteban Alb Valderrama Quiceno, rated 2390, beat Croatia's Ante Brkic, rated 2610, the highest-rated player to appear in the top ten since Round 1.

Round 6 is the one Samarkand has been waiting for. Uzbekistan, the 2022 champions, meet India, the 2024 champions, on board one: the only meeting of two perfect teams, in the host city, on the last day before the rest day. Germany's reward for beating the Americans is China, and Iran, seeded 18th and a point off the lead, play Armenia. At most two teams can still be perfect when the rest day arrives.

Top 10 after Round 5

The official Chess-Results order is retained. MP is match points, TB2 is the official tiebreak value applied after match points, and GP is game points.

Match points decide first, then the official tiebreak. That is why India are second on 14.5 game points, ahead of Germany on 15, and why Iran sit sixth despite the second-highest game-point total in the top ten.

View the full Open standings after Round 5 →

Sources

• FIDE - Olympiad Day 5: Home teams thrive along the Silk Road
• Chess.com - Top Seeds U.S., India Lose In Samarkand Olympiad Round 5
• ChessBase India - Chess Olympiad 2026 R5: India Beats Netherlands 3-1, Faces Uzbekistan Next
• Chess-Results - Round 5 board pairings and individual results
• Chess-Results - standings after Round 5