Bangladesh's men's chess team recorded their best ever performance ever by finishing 33rd in the in the 40th Chess Olympiad that concluded at the Istanbul Expo Centre in Turkey yesterday.

Their previous best finish was 34th in 2002 Chess Olympiad, while the last edition in 2010 in Moscow saw them finish a disappointing 73rd.

This time Bangladesh team, buoyed by the return of the two Grand Masters Enamul Hossain Rajib and Abdullah Al Rakib, turned the table to collect 26 board points and 14 match points. Bangladesh finished as the 7th best Asian country, 9 places ahead of mighty India. They defeated Bosnia and Herzegovina by 2.5-1.5 points in their last round on Sunday.

In the last round matches, GM Ziaur Rahman defeated GM Bojan Kurajica while Abdullah Al Rakib, Rajib and Niaz Murshed, all GMs, drew their boards against GM Emir Dizdarevic, IM Dalibor Stojanovic and IM Bosko Tomic respectively.

Interestingly enough, Rajib and Rakib, who refrained from the game for a couple of years, were the best performers for Bangladesh with 6.5 points each from 10 rounds they played.

Armenia became champion, Russia runner-up and Ukraine finished third.

The women's team from Bangladesh too did fairly well as they finished in the 52nd position out of 125 countries. In the last round, they drew with Turkmenistan by 2-2 points. The women's team collected 24.5 board points and 12 match points. They became the 12th best performing country If om Asia.

In the last round, Bangladesh's Sharmin Sultana Shirin and IWM Rani Hamid outplayed Turkmenistan s FWM Bahar Hallaeva and Aknur Isaeva respectively while FWM Zakia Sultana and Nazrana Khan Eva lost to FWM Gozel Atabaeva and OgulgerekAtabaeva.

Eva was the best female performer for Bangladesh in the tournament as she collected 6.5 points from 10 matches. Russia became champion and China became runner-up while Ukraine finished third.