margin, while drawing a round was worth 1 match point. Teams were ranked in a table based on match points. Tie-breakers for the table were i) the Sonneborn-Berger system; ii) total game points scored; iii) the sum of the match points of the opponents, excluding the lowest one. Tournament rounds started on 24 September and end edwith the final round on 5 October. All rounds started at 15:00 GET (UTC+4), except for the final round which started at 11:00 GET (UTC+4). There was one rest day at the tournament, on 29 September after the fifth round. All dates are GET (UTC+4) Teams and players The open section of the tournament was contested by a record number of 185 teams, representing 180 nations. Georgia, as host nation, have fielded three teams, whilst the International Braille Chess Association (IBCA), the International Physically Disabled Chess Association (IPCA), and the International Chess Committee of the Deaf (ICCD) have each provided one team. The tournament featured nine out of the top ten players from the FIDE rating list published in September 2018 with only the current World Champion Magnus Carlsen being absent. Former World Champion Vishwanathan Anand returned to the Chess Olympiads on board one for India following a break of twelve years. Other players who are playing in the open section include the former World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik, the upcoming challenger in the World Chess Championship 2018 Fabiano Caruana, as well as the former challengers Sergey Karjakin and Boris Gelfand. Grandmaster Eugenio Torre, who was in the line-up of the Philippines for a record twenty-three times in the 1970-2016 period and was the highest-scoring player at the 42nd Chess Olympiad, decided not to play and was named coach of the Philippines national team in the open section. Former FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov was not playing because a dispute between chess officials caused de-recognition of the Bulgarian Chess Federation by FIDE. This was the first time Russia had not been the top-ranked team before the start of a Chess Olympiad since their first entry in 1992 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, conceding the top spot to the United States who are defending the title won at the previous Olympiad. United States are playing with the same line-up that won the gold medal with Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Wesley So, Samuel Shankland and Ray Robson, whose average rating of 2777 was also