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FIDE Online Olympiad 2020 |
On 30th August 2020, India won the FIDE Olympiad (jointly with Russia) for the first time in chess history.
This is the first time ever that a FIDE Olympiad has been conducted online. The decision came in view of the pandemic situation world over.
Before the games started, Russia was undoubtedly reckoned to be the winner. India were seeded 7th. However, teenage grandmasters, Nihal Sarin and R.Praggnanandhaa led India to the quarterfinals. Koneru Humpy (world number 2, Women's chess) helped India reach the finals after a nerve wracking tie-breaker match.
The Indian squad included Vishwanathan Anand, Vidit Santosh Gujarati (captain), P. Harikrishna, Koneru Humpy, Dronavalli Harika, Bhakti Kulkarni, Nihal Sarin, Divya Deshmukh, R. Praggnanandha, Vantika Agrawal, R. Vaishali and Arvindh Chithambaram.
The final against Russia was poised at an interesting stage, with the likely conclusion of an equal score. However at this critical point there were internet problems leading to an apparent loss for Nihal Sarin and Divya Deshmukh.
On board five and six both Nihal Sarin and Divya Deshmukh's games were disconnected so that they were deemed lost on time. On board 3 Koneru Humpy also faced some internet problems losing vital seconds due to internet malfunction. Humpy completed her game but lost her advantageous position and eventually dropped a point.
India lodged a protest about the results of Nihal Sarin and Divya Deshmukh.
Later it was known that there had been an internet outage, perhaps of a global nature. FIDE agreed to look into this. After nearly 45 minutes of deliberation, declared India and Russia joint winners. The official statement read out by FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich:
A similar incident had happened during the tough India vs Armenia clash in the quarterfinals. India had won the first of the two matches 3.5-2.5, after a controversial decision in the game Haik Martirosyan vs Nihal Sarin, which was apparently lost by the former due to internet connectivity issue with chess.com on move 69. The results of the other games tied at 2.5 apiece were as under:
Viswanathan Anand- Levon Aronian ½ - ½ Vidit Gujrathi- Gabriel Sargissian 1 - 0 Koneru Humpy- Elina Danielian 0 - 1 Dronavalli Harika- Lilit Mkrtchian 1 - 0 Vantika Agarwal- Anna Sargsyan 0 - 1
Armenia appealed to FIDE, but it was rejected. So Armenia led by Aronian decided not to play the other match and withdrew from the competition in protest, thus allowing India to reach semi-finals by forfeit.
This online Olympiad made some structural changes such as half the team constitution should comprise women and junior players- a juxtaposition of the usual Men’s Olympiad, Women’s Olympiad and youth Olympiad. There is little doubt that India is an emerging chess superpower.
Congratulatory messages upon India's win were circulated by PM Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and diverse personalities such as 77-year old iconic Bollywood actor, Amitabh Bachchan and Mahindra Group chairman Ananda Mahindra.
One can ask some important questions about the conduct of such online tournaments.
- Why was the match hosted on chess.com and not on FIDE's own server?
- Why was there no provision for internet latency correction (similar to timeseal module in FICS)? Indian players were connecting from their individual homes. Any delay in move transmission would accumulate on the player's clock.
- There does not appear to have been a well thought out pre-determined rule to cover internet outage which could be global, country-wide or even local to the individual player. It would mean that a player's clock would be left running in these situations.
- What were the provisions for checking against computer use by players?
Computer use was detected in four instances. On 5th August FIDE issued the following statement:
The Online Olympiad Fair Play Panel has identified four cases in which there are sufficient grounds to believe the Fair Play Regulations have been violated.
All the results of these players in the Online Olympiad have been turned into losses, and where applicable they will not be allowed to play any further part in the tournament. Tournament officials and team captains concerned have been informed to that effect.
These cases affect four players from Mali (Base Division, Pool B), Brunei Darussalam (Division 4, pool A), Hong Kong (Division 4, pool A), and Nicaragua (Division 4, pool E).
If your team belongs to any of these groups, please check the website for updated results, to see if the standings in your pool might have been affected.
FIDE will not disclose any more information or respond to any inquiries on this matter until a full investigation has been conducted.
If such important tournaments are going to be conducted online, it is important to decide on precise rules to cover internet lag and internet outage. We suggest that active internet latency corrections should be applied to players clocks. Such provisions could make way for removing controversies which leave people unhappy.
The three games from the final which were affected by the internet glitch and one from the match against Armenia, also scored on Time Default are given below: