On April 18-19, the Chinese Chess Association organized an online competition - FIDE Candidates Countries Youth Online Chess Tournament. The motto of the event, held on Chess.com, was “Go World! Be Chess Smart against COVID-19!”  The tournament was broadcasted live on China Leisure Sports TV Network with GMs Hou Yifan (#1 in women's rating list) and Peng Zhaoqin commentating on proceedings. It reached more than 10,000 views, even though the show was in the late evening in China.

This youth competition was inspired by the Candidates Tournament 2020 with five teams representing China, USA, France, Russia, and the Netherlands taking part. Each team consisted of 5 young players under 16 each (3 boys and 2 girls). To make the number of participant teams even, a sixth team was added, playing under the FIDE flag and comprising five players from Cuba, Germany, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and India.

The tournament started on April 18, 22:00 Beijing time. The highest ever rated woman-player Judit Polgar and the former women's World Champion Zhu Chen recorded videos of making the first symbolic moves in the event. The organizers showed these videos before the start of the tournament.

To ensure fair game, the arbiter group supervised all games via Zoom. All the teams were required to enter a Zoom room with one arbiter inside. During the game, every player set up a smartphone or same function device in the right (or left) corner to let the camera show the screen and the player. Besides the measure taken, all captains as members of the appeal committee have discussed and signed a guarantee letter, promising fair play.

Team FIDE headed by GMs Nihal Sarin (2620) and Noribek Abdusattorov (2627) entered the competition as prohibitive rating favorites but in Round 1 it suffered a defeat at hands of the Chinese squad. Meanwhile, Russia was held to a draw by a lower-rated USA. Somewhat surprisingly, in Round 2 Russia dismantled China 4:1 and took the joint lead with the USA which beat France with the same score. In Round 3 team FIDE stopped Russia (3:2), but the USA won its match against France and preserved one-point distance from the closest pursuers.

In Round 4, which became decisive one, team FIDE whitewashed the leader 5:0; China and Russia also scored victories. In the final round, team FIDE made a short work of France, but China convincingly outplayed the USA.

As a result, the teams FIDE and China tied for first place with the former claiming the title by the total number of game points. Russia finished 3rd, USA 4th, whereas France and Netherlands shared 5-6 places.

16-year-old Bibisara Assaubayeva from the FIDE team showed the best individual result in the event with 4 wins and 1 draw. GMs Nihal Sarin (FIDE) and Huang Renjie (China) were the best on board 1, scoring 4 points each.