The Sri Lanka Chess Team qualified to the Division II of the FIDE online Chess Olympiad 2021 after a successful performance at the Division III event held on the 27th, 28th and 29th of August 2021 at the Tornelo Platform. Sri Lanka played strongly and beat New Zealand 5 – 1, Japan 4 -2, IPCA(International Para Chess Association) 4-2, Thailand 5 ½ - ½, Fiji 6 – 0 and Nepal 4-2, drew with South Korea 3 – 3 and marginally lost to Malaysia 2 ½ - 3 ½ and Chinese Taipei 2 ½ - 3 ½.

The Online Chess Olympiad 2021 conducted by the International Chess Federation (FIDE), organized by the Chinese Chess Federation is in progress from 20th August to 15th September 2021 at the Tornelo Platform. A total of 155 countries are participating in the event which is divided in to 5 divisions. The teams are divided to divisions by their initial ranking and Sri Lanka with the initial ranking of 95th was placed in the Division 3.

The base division, the Division 4 was held on the 3rd weekend of August with a participation of 50 teams in 5 round robin events with 11 rounds after distribution of the last sixty ranked teams according to the geographical consideration. So, the top three of the each qualifying event is advanced to the division III. The Division III was consists of 35 teams ranked above the Base division teams and the 15 teams selected from the base division. Sri Lanka was in the Pool A of the Division III and managed to select for the Division II being 3rd in the Pool A of Division III. Malaysia was the winner of our group and Chinese Taipei won the 2nd place.

The Sri Lanka team was consisted of Ranindu Dilshan Liyanage(Ananda College), Minul Sanjula Doluweera(University of Colombo), Dinushki Premanath, Sachni Dinushima Ranasinghe(Nf3 Chess Club), Susal De Silva(Nalanda College), KM Sanudula Dahamdi (Musaeus College), Isuru Alahakoon(Sri Lanka Navy), Rasika Samaranayake (Pera Knights Chess Club), Niklesha Tharushi (Visakha Vidyalaya), Sandeepani M Tharushi (Devi Balika Vidyalaya) and Ashvini Pavalachandran (Wycherley International School). Each team fielding 6 players in a match as two men, two women, 1 junior boy and 1 junior boy. Each game has 1 point and if a team wins more than three then they are declared as the match winner. There was nine matches of this nature and we won 6 matches, drew 1 and lost 2.

We wish them success in the Division two which includes the teams with average ratings are more than 2,000!