Turkmen chess player Allayar Shirliyev won the Open A category at the 32nd Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival, which concluded in the United Arab Emirates. The competition, held at the Radisson Blu Hotel on the famous Corniche, was organised by the Abu Dhabi Chess Club and Sports Centre. This festival is traditionally considered one of the largest and most prestigious intellectual forums in the region, annually attracting hundreds of participants from all over the world.
In the Open A category, which was played according to the Swiss system over nine rounds with a classic time control, the 22-year-old Ashgabatian demonstrated a masterful game and an unwavering will to win. As the seventh seed with an international FIDE rating of 2184, Candidate Master of Sports Allayar Shirliyev scored 8 points out of 9 possible and took the sole lead in the tournament table. The tense race for the main trophy ended with the Turkmen athlete emerging victorious over his more experienced rivals: second and third places were taken by International Masters Bashir Eitey (Syria) and Richilieu III Salcedo (Philippines), who scored 7.5 points each. Following his brilliant performance, Shirliyev increased his personal FIDE rating by 40.6 points.
In parallel with the Open A tournament in Abu Dhabi, uncompromising games unfolded in the Masters, Open B and Juniors U16 categories. The elite chess players of the world, including Daniil Dubov, Pa Iniyan, Anand Pranav, S. L. Narayanan, Abhijit Gupta, David Paravyan, Alexander Rahmanov, and Ivan Zemlyanskiy, met at the boards in the premier grandmaster competition.
Confident performance of Shirliyev was a natural continuation of successful 2026 summer sports season of Turkmenistan. Real chess boom of the country is confirmed by a series of remarkable international achievements. Almost simultaneously with the triumph in the UAE, good news arrived from Mumbai, India, where the Asian Junior Championships for U20s was held from 16th to 26th of August. There, Turkmen chess player Lala Shohradova won a gold medal in the rapid tournament, adding to the silver medal she won in blitz earlier, on the 17th of August. Moreover, at the beginning of summer, the Turkmenistan national team wrote a bright page in the history of domestic sports, winning a record 16 medals at the Central and North Asian Championships in Kyrgyzstan.
Gold medal of Allayar Shirliyev in Abu Dhabi is further compelling evidence of the rapid rise of the national chess school, whose students are increasingly asserting themselves with confidence and authority on major international stages.
