FIDE World Youth U16 Chess Olympiad started in Netherlands

The FIDE World Youth Olympiad 2023 kicked off Sunday at Eindhoven’s High Tech Campus in the Netherlands. 

Indian team seeded 16^th has started well in the first round of World Youth Chess Olympiad  starting from 13^th Aug 2023 in the serene place of Eindhovan, Netherlands. This is the strongest World Youth Olympiad in the chess history comprising 63 teams from more than 50 countries. The tournament has 9 rounds and will be finishing on 18^th Aug with double rounds a day except on 16^th Aug 2023. This edition has some new format like 45+10 mins time schedule for the whole game instead of regular timing and fixed 4 players with no reserve player in the team which means no shuffling of players on any board. All the teams should have mandatory one girl player as per rule.

Indian team is represented by Aswath S, Arjun Adireddy, Harsh Suresh, and Tejaswini G and Niraj Mishra as a Coach/ Non playing captain as well as Swati Ghate as coach of the team.  Playing against Uganda in the first round, India scored 3.5 points missing half a point on board no-2. It was a smooth sailing for everyone except Arjun missed a tactical possibility of knight sacrifice and got perpetual check in slightly superior ending of Queen + Knight vs Queen+ Bishop.