Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan (Elo 2688) made world No. 5 and former World Championship challenger Fabiana Caruana of USA (2783) dance to his tune and scored a superb counter-attacking win in the men's (Open) section of the Chess Olympiad on Monday.
No. 14 seeds Uzbeks held top seeds USA with Wesley So winning on the third board. The other two games were drawn. Abdusattorov, just 17, already world men's rapid champion and junior classical world champion, gave a fabulous game against Caruana.
In a Sarratt attack (1. d4 d5, 2. Bf4), world No. 64 Abdusattorov won in 53 moves in a highly entertaining game. He thwarted threatening kingside to queenside shift of the opponent's queen. The youngster was not willing to play passively and moved his castled king from g1-h7-g6 and finally to the safe h6 square after facing checks.
In a queen, rook and pawns ending, Abdusattorov exchanged queens and then won on the strength of his three connected pawns against Caruana's solitary pawn in a rook ending.
The opening was Caruana's choice. It was expected to be a surprise for the rival as the American had not played this opening in major games. Abdusattorov had lost to India's Deep Sengupta in Moscow 2019 in the same opening. But this time, he reversed the result with the same colour.
No. 45 seeds Mongolia, who had held Hungary on Sunday, gave another notable performance by splitting points with world champion Magnus Carlsen's Norway. Though Carslen won on the top board, Mongolia's Sugar Gan-Erdene gave the third seeds a bitter pill to swallow by winning on the fourth board.
Germany's 17-year-old Vincent Keymer (2686), who was rested for the first three rounds, scored a win on the top board against Alexander Baburin as they beat Ireland 2.5-1.5.
Besides USA vs Uzbekistan and India vs France, some other important contests were drawn in the open section: most notable being Poland vs Romania and Turkey vs Azerbaijan and Canada vs Iran.
In the women's section, Poland and Azerbaijan scored important wins over Holland and Israel respectively. After holding USA on Sunday, the Mongolia women held Kazakhstan on Monday. USA defeated Australia 3-1.
