Nihal Sarin and Koneru Humpy Both Won the Board 2 Gold at the European Club Cup in Budva, Where Humpy's Monte-Carlo Took the Women's Title and Sarin's Novy Bor Finished Second in the Open on 23 October 2026

Nihal Sarin won the Board 2 gold medal in the Open section of the European Chess Club Cup in Budva, Montenegro, with 5 points from 6 games, and Koneru Humpy won the same prize in the women’s section with 4.5 from 6. The seven-round event ended on Friday 23 October 2026. Pentala Harikrishna, Sarin’s teammate at the Czech club Novy Bor, took the silver on Board 3 with 5 from 6, according to FIDE’s closing report of 24 October 2026.

These are individual board prizes, awarded for results on one board across the event. They are separate from the team medals, which went to different clubs: Bayegan Pendik of Turkey won the Open, with Novy Bor second, and Monte-Carlo won the women’s section.

What a board prize is

The Club Cup is a seven-round Swiss tournament, in which players are paired against opponents on similar scores and nobody is knocked out. The Open section had 108 clubs and the women’s section 22. FIDE’s report puts the total of 130 teams above the 122 at Rhodes in 2025. Open teams field six boards and women’s teams four, and the last board in each is a reserve board.

The organisers’ rules say the individual prizes go to the best results on each board, and that a player must take part in at least 70 per cent of the rounds to be counted (50 per cent for reserves). FIDE lists the three medallists for every board. Open Board 2 was Sarin first, Wei Yi second and Karthikeyan Murali third, so two of the three medals on that board went to Indian players. Women’s Board 2 was Humpy first, Leya Garifullina second and Klaudia Kulon third.

Indian reports add that Arjun Erigaisi finished fourth on Board 1 (myKhel and Adda247 both say so). FIDE’s list names three medallists per board and gives no fourth place.

Sarin’s 5 from 6

Sarin finished unbeaten with four wins and two draws, according to myKhel, RevSportz and Adda247. They name his wins as Jorden van Foreest, Karthikeyan Murali and Maxim Rodshtein. ChessBase’s round reports place two of those: he beat van Foreest on Board 2 in round 6, in a 3-3 draw between Novy Bor and SuperChess Romania, and he beat Murali in the final round.

Murali, who played Board 2 for the Montenegrin club Elektroprivreda, scored 4.5 from 6 for the bronze (myKhel and Adda247).

Harikrishna’s 5 from 6 on Board 3 included a last-round win over Velimir Ivic, per ChessBase. The Board 3 gold went to Lennert Lenaerts.

Novy Bor, level on points at the top

Novy Bor finished on 13 match points and was undefeated, with six wins and one draw. Bayegan Pendik also had 13 with the same record and took the title on tiebreak: ChessBase’s final table gives Pendik 261.5 and Novy Bor 253 in the first tiebreak column. Rishon LeZion A of Israel was third on 12.

The title was decided in the last round. Going into round 7, three clubs shared the lead on 11 points: SuperChess Romania, Bayegan Pendik and Novy Bor. Pendik beat the defending champions SuperChess 3.5 to 2.5. Novy Bor beat Elektroprivreda 4.5 to 1.5, according to ChessBase, with David Navara also winning on Board 6. FIDE’s report describes the same match as a 3 to 1 win, which does not fit a six-board team, so the ChessBase score is used here.

Humpy and Monte-Carlo

In the women’s section Humpy played for Cercle d’Echecs de Monte-Carlo, the club she has been associated with since 2007, according to her post on X as reported by myKhel. Monte-Carlo finished on 12 match points with six wins and one loss. CE Gambit Bonnevoie of Luxembourg also had 12, and Monte-Carlo took the title on tiebreak, 159.5 to 145 in the first tiebreak column. FIDE says the club retained its title, and ChessBase counts it as the club’s ninth tournament victory.

Two of Humpy’s games are described in the round reports. In round 6 she defended a pawn-down endgame against Dinara Wagner of SuperChess Romania for 95 moves, and ChessBase says the half-point secured a 2.5 to 1.5 match win. In round 7 ChessBase says she met “considerable difficulties” against Nia Donghvani before winning, in a 4 to 0 win over Davit Jojua’s Chess Club. Her 4.5 from 6 comes from the Indian reports; FIDE’s report names her as the Board 2 winner without a score.

Aleksandra Goryachkina took Board 1 gold for Monte-Carlo, so the champions won both the Board 1 and Board 2 prizes.

What the sources do not give

None of the pages read for this article publishes performance ratings for the board winners, so none are given here. When the organisers’ results page was opened on 29 October 2026, its results section read “Coming Soon”, so the scores above rest on FIDE’s report, ChessBase’s round reports and the Indian press digests.

For the other chess results of the autumn, see the report on the Samarkand Olympiad, where India’s open team won silver and the women bronze, and the overview of India’s chess rise.