After a depleted French team held India 1 on all boards, Uzbekistan made the host feel a lot better by holding top seed USA 2-2 on what turned out to be a day of the underdogs in the Chess Olympiad in Mamallapuram on August 1, 2022.
Not surprisingly, Monday witnessed some close encounters involving some leading teams with three of the top four matches producing 2-2 deadlocks, while fancied Netherlands lost to Israel. Notwithstanding a defeat to higher-ranked nations in each section, the Indian teams found more reasons to rejoice.
If Tania Sachdev and Vantika Agarwal provided the winning margins for India 1 and India 2, D. Gukesh and Nihal Sarin scored dominating victories to keep India 2 among the leaders of the Open section at eight match-points.
