Sri Lanka end up fourth in FIDE Online Chess Olympiad

Sri Lanka being the last (10th) ranked initially at the event. Though the losses in the first two rounds to strong Belarus1 .5 – 4 .5) and Norway (2-4 ) made it difficult in their task but they fought back strongly to come up with good victories in latter part of the tournament, Sri Lanka beat Zimbabwe (4 .5 – 1 .5), Portugal (4 -2). Albania(3 .5 – 2.5 ), Montenegro (4 – 2) and Scotland (4-2) with two draws against the Champion Israeli team and the top seed Sweden team to score 12 match points to finish fourth and it was a good fight back.

Sanudula Dahamdi scored 7 .5 points out of 9 games while Susal De Silva scored 6.5 points out of nine games in the last two boards while Ranindu Liyanage, playing the strongest top board, managed to score 4 .5 points out of 8 games . Israel won the 1st place out playing Belarus who was the leader till 8th round in the final round winning all 8 games except the draw taken by Sri Lankan team. Belarus was second with 16 points and Sweden was third with 13 points.

The Uzbekistan Grandmaster, Alexie Barasov made a great contribution by preparing the team throughout the event as a coach.