Chennai, May 17 (Representative) With an aim to promote the upcoming 44th Chess Olympiad, the All India Chess Federation (AICF) will organised state-level tournaments for school children across India in the next couple of months to select 268 kids who will get once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interact with international chess stars and watch the world’s biggest chess event to be held at Mahabalipuram near here from July 28 to August 10. The AICF will be spending Rs one crore for this, an AICF release here said today. The initiative, a part of the Chess in Schools Project by AICF, will be conducted through the state associations and with the support of Tamil Nadu Government. AICF will be spending Rs 86,00,000 in order to conduct the tournaments to create awareness among the school children and boost chess activities in the country ahead of the Chess Olympiad to be held for the first time in India. In total, 76 kids from 38 districts of Tamil Nadu and six players from each of the other 32 states/union territories affiliated to the AICF will be travelling to Mahabalipuram to witness the Olympiad.
No entry fee will be collected from the players to participate in the tournaments. A travelling allowance will be provided to each student, in addition to free boarding and lodging for three days. AICF will be allocating Rs 1,00,000 for each district for district-level tournament in Tamil Nadu while Rs 1,50,000 for each of the 32 states/union territories. Tournament Director of the 44th Chess Olympiad, Bharat Singh Chauhan said “We are trying to attract the younger generation to chess. Our aim is to get participation of at least 30,000 students in this project”. “For school children, access to travel and tickets for the Olympiad would be difficult and we want to provide them this much needed exposure.
We are spending about Rs one crore on this project”, he added. School children, registered with AICF for the year 2022 -23 and below 15 years of age–born on or after January 1, 2007, will take part in the tournaments for boys and girls to be held for two days in each state. Tamil Nadu, being the host state, will have the privilege of organising the district level tournaments in all the districts separately. The winners and runners-up of the state level tournaments as well as the best boy and girl among the government school children will be selected, while from Tamil Nadu, winners of boy’s and girl’s event from each district will get this life-time experience. The coordinators are FIDE Trainers, Praful Zaveri and Prasenjit Dutta.