Baku. 1 September. REPORT.AZ/ 42nd Chess Olympiad in Baku, Azerbaijan. The opening ceremony is scheduled for Thursday, September 1 at 18:30 Baku time; the first round will be played on Friday. The playing hall is the stunning Crystal Hall, where the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest was held.
Report informs, about 3,000 players and officials will be traveling to Baku for the upcoming Olympiad. The tournament will last up to September 14.
The teams have to play with a fixed board order, which needs to be communicated at least 20 hours before the start of the first round. This means that the board-one player of the first round will always play on board one when he's on the team.
Alongside the Olympiad, the 87th FIDE Congress will be held September 5-13 in the Fairmont Hotel in Baku. Part of the Congress is the General Assembly on September 11-13, where delegates of all FIDE federations will discuss and vote on important matters.
182 teams will play at men's tournament, 142 teams at women's competitions. Azerbaijan will be represented with 3 teams both at men's and women's rounds.
Azerbaijan,USA, Russia and China are the favourites of the men's tournament.
Some 11 rounds will be played. Pairings will be based on the Swiss system, where teams with an equal number of match points are paired against each other where possible. The order of classification will be based on match points; a win yields two points whereas a 2-2 score results in one point for each team.
Notably, the Olympiad is being held for the 42nd time. The first official Olympiad was held in 1927 in London. Team tournaments in Paris (1924) and Budapest (1926) are considered to be unofficial predecessors.