The young Uzbek team winning this year’s Olympiad came as a pleasant surprise, but it is not an isolated example in the recent shift of world chess power. Uzbek boys, Kazakh girls, Azeri youth, Chinese, Indian and Iranian young phenoms ever more frequently lit the chess sky. What do their countries have in common? They all once lined the Silk Road.
At the end of October the FIDE and the Malta Chess Federation organised the World Amateur Chess Championships, in which about 200 male and female players took part. The titles all went to Mongolia or Kazakhstan. | Photo: Andreas Kontokanis