#99. Anish Giri Recaps The Chess Olympiad!

This week's episode of the New In Chess Podcast features an interview with Dutch grandmaster Anish Giri. Anish barely needs an introduction. He is one of the world’s strongest and most popular chess grandmasters, he’s the top board of the national team of the Netherlands and he is a contributing editor to New In Chess Magazine (and, of course, he is much more, such as a great chess influencer and instructor with his own YouTube channel and his own instructional platform ChessMonitor.com).  Anish has just returned from the Olympiad, where 206 teams competed in the Open Section, and an amazing 189 teams in the Women’s section.  As you may have seen or heard the Women’s section was won by China and the Open section ended in a triumph for Uzbekistan.  Besides the chess on the board, there was also a huge chess political contest, as FIDE, the international chess federation, elected a new President. Timur Turlov, a billionaire businessman from Kazakhstan will be FIDE’s president for the coming four years. Speaking to Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam from his home in The Hague, Anish answered my questions about the impressive winners from Uzbekistan, the special character of the Olympiad, the performances of the most prominent stars (What was Gukesh doing on Board 4 of the Indian team? What should we think of yet another exceptional result of Yagiz Erdogmus?), and much more. Such as his meetings with all three candidates in the presidential elections and his take on the new president Timur Turlov. If you know Anish, you know that you should not miss this episode! 0:00 – Intro 2:35 – Anish explains what makes the Chess Olympiad a unique event  6:10 – The varying degrees to which different chess federations support their players 10:44 – The Global Chess League 15:35 – The Dutch team’s performance at the Olympiad 20:25 – Jorden losing out on winning a board gold medal 22:14 – AD BREAK 23:12 – The winners of the Olympiad: Uzbekistan 28:52 – Gukesh playing fourth board for India 32:45 – Ding’s performance for China 34:40 – The US team’s performance 37:20 – Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus’s performance 43:40 – AD BREAK 44:12 – The FIDE presidential elections 1:03:02 - Outro