The Chess Olympiad took place in Baku in September 2016. Scotland's team was led by three Polytechnic players, Andrew Greet, John Shaw, and Colin McNab. From our point of view, the highlight was Polytechnic v USA in round 2: Andrew and John went down to Caruana and Nakamura (!), but Colin came very close to beating Shankland on board 3. The remaining rounds were rather anticlimactic, with nearly all our opponents either much too strong or much too weak. However, each of the Polytechnic players came away with at least one result against a strong grandmaster. Congratulations to Andrew for achieving a performance rating of 2513 with 6/10 on board 1!

The Olympiad was won by USA, ahead of Ukraine on tie-break. Other favourites like Russia, China, England, France, and India were left behind in the pack.