Upsets of the Olympiad: Women's Round 5
These are the ten largest rating upsets from 45 qualifying games. Draws, forfeits and games involving an unrated player are excluded.
| # | Winner | Team | Rating | Defeated | Team | Rating | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Camila Mejia | Honduras | 1608 | Walijah Ahmed | Bangladesh | 1949 | +341 |
| 2 | Julia Muratet Carmona | Andorra | 1820 | Anna Wagener | Luxembourg | 2160 | +340 |
| 3 | Aida Paunescu | Cyprus | 1691 | Chloe Badenhorst | South Africa | 1997 | +306 |
| 4 | Tansi Tung Wu | Chinese Taipei | 1573 | Onkemetse Francis | Botswana | 1874 | +301 |
| 5 | Mahri Agamuradova | Turkmenistan | 1939 | Anna Laura Scarsi | Argentina | 2212 | +273 |
| 6 | Alba Pllana | Kosovo | 1470 | Salima Okkeli | Morocco | 1742 | +272 |
| 7 | Maissiri Carole Danwe | Cameroon | 1400 | Cydel Terubea | Fiji | 1663 | +263 |
| 8 | Nozanin Makhmudova | Tajikistan | 1858 | Giulia Sala | Italy | 2088 | +230 |
| 9 | Meleh M. Davis | Liberia | 1507 | Maria Soares de Araujo | Timor-Leste | 1724 | +217 |
| 10 | Tchetche Marie Yavo | Cote d’Ivoire | 1703 | Nadia Braganza | New Zealand | 1916 | +213 |
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 Women's Round 5 game, sorted by rating upset →
It has now happened at three Olympiads in a row. Poland beat India in 2022, beat them again in 2024, and on Sunday the ninth seeds did it once more, 2.5-1.5, against the top seeds and defending champions.
Three boards were drawn, so everything came down to board two. Vaishali Rameshbabu was, if anything, slightly better in a chaotic middlegame until she exchanged queens. The ending looked level, but the small inaccuracies added up, Aleksandra Maltsevskaya began picking off pawns, and the double-rook ending was eventually beyond saving. Maltsevskaya is still perfect. Vaishali has now lost to Poland at all three of those Olympiads.
India have recovered from this before: they lost to Poland in Budapest and still took gold. But they drop to eighth, and their Round 6 opponents are the United States.
The Americans came very close to making it two defeats for their country in one afternoon. Carissa Yip lost on top board to Afruza Khamdamova, Rose Atwell was in trouble on board four, and the other two games were level. Alice Lee rescued them. Her opponent was Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova, who led the US team at the previous two Olympiads and now plays for Uzbekistan. Lee said afterwards that she knew Tokhirjonova's games well, and it showed: she swapped queens into an ending where her pawns could not be stopped. She is 5/5. Atwell escaped, and it was her opponent who ended up taking a perpetual. United States 2, Uzbekistan 2.
The other three perfect teams stayed perfect. China beat Bulgaria 3-1 with wins from Zhu Jiner, now 3/3 on board one, and Song Xuxin, 4.5/5 on board two. Azerbaijan beat Serbia by the same score with wins on the bottom two boards. Kazakhstan's match with Germany was drifting towards a draw until Hanna Marie Klek played 22...Bg5? on board three and Meruert Kamalidenova struck with 23.Rxa8!, coming out with two bishops for a rook and converting. Kazakhstan won 2.5-1.5, and Alua Nurman made no secret of the target: gold.
The upset of the day came further down the hall. Turkmenistan, seeded 55th, beat 28th-seeded Argentina 2.5-1.5, and Mahri Agamuradova was at the heart of it again. Her win over Anna Laura Scarsi is her second top-ten rating upset of the event, after she headed the Round 2 list by beating Poland's Alicja Sliwicka. Argentina's week has turned sharply: since beating Ukraine 3.5-0.5 in Round 3, they have lost to Uzbekistan and now Turkmenistan.
Forty-five games qualified, the most in the Women's event so far. Alba Pllana is making a habit of this: rated 1470, the Kosovan topped the Round 4 list and is back in the top ten with a 272-point win over Morocco's Salima Okkeli. The biggest gap belonged to Honduras's Camila Mejia, rated 1608, who beat Bangladesh's Walijah Ahmed by 341 points, one clear of Andorra's Julia Muratet Carmona.
The four perfect teams are paired entirely among themselves in Round 6, Poland against China and Azerbaijan against Kazakhstan, so at most two will reach the rest day on 12/12. India play the United States, and Georgia, the second seeds, face Uzbekistan.
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.
| Rank | Team | FED | MP | TB2 | GP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Poland | POL | 10 | 100 | 16.5 |
| 2 | China | CHN | 10 | 97 | 17 |
| 3 | Kazakhstan | KAZ | 10 | 90 | 16 |
| 4 | Azerbaijan | AZE | 10 | 83 | 16 |
| 5 | United States of America | USA | 9 | 94.5 | 17 |
| 6 | Uzbekistan | UZB | 9 | 78 | 16 |
| 7 | Bulgaria | BUL | 8 | 90 | 15 |
| 8 | India | IND | 8 | 88 | 15.5 |
| 9 | Germany | GER | 8 | 83 | 14 |
| 10 | Serbia | SRB | 8 | 79.5 | 15 |
Match points decide first, then the official tiebreak. Poland lead despite China having half a game point more, and the United States share the highest game-point total in the table with China yet sit fifth after the Uzbekistan draw.
View the full Women's 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