Samarkand Olympiad Selection 2026
This year’s Olympiad will be in Samarkand, Uzbekistan from 10th to 24th September 2026. Our federation is conducting these selection tournaments for Men and Women to choose the 5 representatives for HKG.
Previous year’s selections were plagued by tiebreak and other problems. We will introduce a new tournament format to ensure that there are NO ranking tiebreaks.
| Date | Swiss tournament | Knockout stage 1 (top 20 players) | Knockout stage 2 (10 players) |
| 19th Feb | 1 & 2 | ||
| 20th Feb | 3 & 4 | ||
| 21st Feb | 5 & 6 | ||
| 22nd Feb | 2 games / TB | ||
| 23rd Feb | 2 games / TB |
The 5 players who won through Knockout Stage 2 will represent Hong Kong at the Olympiad. The board order will be decided with a round-robin tournament held at Smithfield during club days, dates to be announced.
Venue for selection tournament: Shop 14, City Garden Shopping Centre (federation offices)
Time control for swiss event: 90 minutes for the game with 30 seconds increment per move.
Morning round: 10 am (tiebreaks immediately after)
Afternoon round: 4 pm (tiebreaks immediately after)
PLEASE NOTE: Players (finishing top 20 positions) must remain after round 6 to draw lots and agree on time control.
Knockout format: 1 game each with White and Black. If match tied then 2 Rapid games 15m+5s. If tied again then 2 Blitz games 3m+2s. After this the players have to play one game at Armageddon format White gets 5 minutes and Black has 4 minutes. If draw then Black wins.
IMPORTANT NOTICE:
Women Selection has too few players we propose format change
6 rds swiss
top 2 qualifies
3rd to 8th play knockout for remaining 3 places
