Monthly Archives: May 2020

Indias former world champion Vishy Anand stole the show at this weeks online Nations Cup as the 50-year-old veteran caught the world No 4, Ian Nepomniachtchi, with home prep and won in 17 moves as checkmate was imminent. The unsuspecting Russian blitzed out his replies until it was too late, and the entire fifth-round game was over in just five minutes.

Meanwhile, China remain the squad to beat in international team chess. Beijings elite players won both the open and womens gold medals at the 190-nation Olympiad in 2018 and they have taken a clear lead in the online Nations Cup with grandmaster and computer move-by-move commentaries.

The competition format, four-player teams including a womens board plus two alternates, strongly favours China, whose male players are the world title candidates Ding Liren and Wang Hao, the rising star Wei Yi, and the World Cup semi-finalist Yu Yangyi. Their womens board is shared by the world No 1, Hou Yifan, back in action after her academic year at Oxford, and the reigning world champion, Ju Wenjun.

After eight of the 10 rounds, which qualify two teams for Sundays final, China led with 15/16 ahead of United States 11/16, Europe 10/16, India and Russia 5/16, Rest of the World 2/16.

Europes team is led by Frances world No 5, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, with Magnus Carlsen conspicuously absent. The tournament is being played on chess.com, the major rival to chess24.com which hosted last weeks Carlsen Invitational. Now chess24 is carrying the Nations Cup games, and providing an entertaining commentary by the world champion himself.

Why did he decline to play? I think for me it would have felt more important to play if I had been, lets say, American or Chinese or even Russian. Representing your country in such a tournament is huge, but representing Europe. I dont feel so strongly about Europe.

Chess.com has a different explanation, that Carlsen wanted a higher fee than other participants, but was turned down by Fides organisers.

Anands miniature, one of the fastest wins ever between elite players in major competition, will make the Nations Cup remembered. His trainer had found the idea recently, and a previous trainer had also done so many years earlier. It caught out the Stockfish computer on the chess24 website, which flashed an equal position right up to 15 f5!! when it suddenly changed to +6.

Blacks moves are natural, but after 13...Be6? (d4 or Nc6) Nepomniachtchi thought he was already lost. Near the end Black cannot escape by 16...Qb6 17 f6 Nd7 18 Qh6 Nxf6 19 Ng5 or by 16...Qd5 17 f6 Qe4 18 Rae1.

1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 g6 3 Nc3 d5 4 cxd5 Nxd5 5 Bd2 Bg7 6 e4 Nxc3 7 Bxc3 c5 8 d5 Bxc3+ 9 bxc3 Qd6 10 Qd2 0-0 11 f4 e6 12 Nf3 exd5 13 Bc4 Be6? 14 0-0 d4? 15 f5!! Bxc4 16 e5! Qd7 17 f6 1-0

Players at all levels from club matches upwards now spend serious time preparing for the favourite lines of their opponents and hoping that one day they will hit the jackpot and bring off a homeworked victory, but few ever get the chance to do so in such spectacular style as Anand.

There was a bizarre sequel. For most of the match it seemed that Anands win would secure the match against Russia, until right at the end Indias No 2, Pentala Harikrishna, made a mouse slip in a drawn position and lost a piece and the game to Vladislav Artemiev.

The closing rounds of the Nations Cup can be viewed online on Friday and Saturday (2pm start) with the final at 3pm on Sunday.

3670: 1 d6! Qxd6 2 Qh8+ Ke7 3 Re1+ Kd7 (if Kf6 3 Rxe8 with a bishop up) 4 Bb5+ and wins.

Read more here:

Chess: Vishy Anand ambushes Russia's world No 4 to win in five minutes - The Guardian

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Chess Players Forum (CPF) is among those taken aback by developments in the governing body of the game in the country.

The faction fight in All India Chess Federation (AICF) is going on regardless of the lockdown. Return of normalcy seems unlikely until elections are held. Launched in the last week of March, CPF is a registered body with around 80 players as members.

The process of having more members was stalled by the lockdown. Nevertheless, it has written to the sports ministry and world body FIDE to intervene and help in restoring order in the federation.

The forum maintains it is neutral as far as the AICF power tussle is concerned. However, it has among its office-bearers players who have taken a side.

The CPF vice-president Dibyendu Barua was a losing candidate in the Bengal Chess Association elections from the group opposing AICF president PR Venketrama Raja.

Managing committee members Abhijit Kunte and Neeraj Mishra are active functionaries of the faction headed by AICF secretary BS Chauhan (removal from the post disputed). Officials insist that the stand taken by individuals has nothing to do with the CPFs stated position of being impartial.

Personally, members can support who they want, but that has nothing to do with the forums stand of staying neutral. Players are affected by the situation in AICF. There is no clarityover renewal of player registration and the national championships. We want these issues resolved, said CPF president Varugeese Koshy.

V Saravanan, secretary of CPF, explained that there was no faction feud in the AICF when they started working on the formation of this body.

It began around June-July last year. At that time, there was no problem in the AICF and hence no question of anybody taking sides. We have absolutely no side to take in the forum with regards to the politics in AICF. None of our members will do that. We will have elections. Players can choose who they want.

Barua and Mishra said they are entitled to their views on the central characters in the AICF drama, but it does not come in the way of how the players forum functions. Both feel that because its launch coincided with the fight in the federation, one should not think that the forum supports a particular side.

Not part of the decision-making process, players are contributors to the financial well being of the AICF. Close to 90,000 players pay an annual fee of `250 each.

The CPF wants the infighting to end for the sake of the players, considering that they will suffer if the problem is not solved after the lockdown.

Going by documents released in public and what we hear from people involved, whats happening in AICF is politics. Things are in a confusing state. Its bad for the players because you need a federation. This crisis has to end and we have written to the government and FIDE, said Saravanan.

The rest is here:

Chess Players Forum wants feud to end - The New Indian Express

Vikas Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, May 10

The slow 2G internet in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir failed to dampen the spirits of the players as the first ever online J&K UT Chess Championship witnessed an overwhelming response from all corners of J&K.

Atul Kumar Gupta, president of the All J&K Chess Association (AJKCA) was surprised to see 171 players participation in this online sporting event. Keeping in view the slow 2G internet speed in the UT, I was hoping participation of around 50-60 players, Gupta told The Tribune.

The championship was held on May 8 and the winners were announced the next day. We all are surprised by such a high participation in the ever event with registration of 171 players, he said.

The top 6 players will play in the national online event slated to be held on May 15. They are Soham Kamotra, Ritwan Sauntra, Arushi Kotwal, Pranav Abrol, Ashutosh Jamwal and Ajit Singh.

Due to internet problems many players could not participate, otherwise the number would have been much higher. Still some could not sign up due to the lack of knowledge. The organisers guided all the players well in advance. For that, three practice events before the actual tournament were also conducted for the purpose of guidance to players. No entry fee was charged from any player for this event, he added.

Read more from the original source:

First J&K online chess event witnesses overwhelming response - The Tribune India

The platform Im talking about is, of course, ASX CHESS and planned upgrades will further erode the quintessential wrap platforms' ability to persist with outdated technology and layering fees on top of fees.

TheASXs project to upgrade CHESS with a new Digital Ledger Technology (DLT) messaging protocol will lead a new age of innovation in financial markets, which will see absolute digitisation through to the end investor.

To understand why, we must go back a little in history to the dawn of digitisation, when paper share certificates were replaced and the ASX initiated CHESS, which was, and still is, a unique capability.

Back then, most of the world moved to electronic registries and sub custodial capabilities, where a bank held the assets and end investors became what are called beneficial owners. Here in Australia (and NZ) we did things differently, replacing the share certificate with an electronic version called a Holder Identification Number (HIN), with the custodian or central counterpart being the ASX through its CHESS facility.

At the same time Australia also initiated compulsory superannuation, and managed funds flourished. At the time, managed funds were all unlisted vehicles which had to be held by a custodian, so banks devised the concept of the wrap platform, where all assets could be consolidated under a custodial arrangement and included consolidated tax reporting.

This made sense in the 1990s, because this custodial layer added administration benefits and scale that individual direct holdings (HIN) found difficult to replicate. However, it also introduced several intermediaries between the investor and their investments, with each one adding extra cost. The pricing, security and transparency benefits of holding listed securities in the investors own name, on HIN, were lost.

Fast forward to today and lower cost listed fund structures, particularly ETFs, give advisers asset allocation capabilities that can use 100per cent listed investments. Advances in technology and SaaS solutions mean investors' assets, even if they are both listed and unlisted, can be consolidated for tax reporting purposes. As a result, we have a firm belief that any platform based only on holding assets via a custodial capability is using obsolete technology and penalising the retail investor. The platform of the future should have the capability to hold and report listed securities on HIN, alongside other assets (global equities, managed funds) via custody.

And this gets us to the crux of why the ASX CHESS upgrade is so important.

Administering individual investors holdings on a security-by-security basis (as against bulked in a single custodian account with sub holders/beneficial owners) has been burdensome, and tested legacy technologies. As part of the ASX CHESS Replacement project, data will become more readily available, in a format more easily ingested by fintechs developing efficiency solutions.

There has been speculation in financial markets around what the new wave of product providers will look like, particularly in the superannuation sector. Much of this speculation has been based on providers having more efficient technology connecting all the existing components of a traditional superannuation provider manager, operations, administrator, custodian, trustee, insurance provider. But imagine a world where many of these could be removed completely.

A world where there was a manager that did provide value through portfolio/asset selection, but all the individual securities were held directly in the investors names, with a single custodian/administrator/operations/trustee provider ensuring the investors portfolio was always in line with the managers mandate.

A capability that meant when an investor wanted to move from one manager to another, it would be a simple case of rebalancing the different securities from one portfolio to another. Core securities would always remain in the investors name rather than the current laborious and costly process of redeeming from one fund to another where all the securities are sold down, before being reinvested in a new fund where many of the securities are likely to be the same. Technology strips out all those unnecessary fees, allowing savings to be passed through to the consumer.

New capabilities in corporate actions and registry management will further streamline the process soon. There will no doubt be innovation and development we are yet to envisage, facilitated through more open access to data.

While the ASX CHESS upgrade project has now been delayed, along with everything we are experiencing in this new COVID-19 world, the writing has been on the wall for some time given the complexity and buy in required from all participants it touches across financial markets.

Notwithstanding this road bump, we will no doubt hear more noise from those service providers running obsolete technology and platforms that stand most to lose from this initiative.

The ASX CHESS upgrade project will eventually lead to a world where investors are able to hold their listed securities directly no matter the fund structure or manager. As a result, the various layers of fees and services that have been built up around the industry will be rationalised, delivering more cost-effective solutions and ultimately better returns for end investors, which is really what the industry should be all about.

David Ferrall, chief executive, FinClear

CHESS upgrade to further disrupt platforms

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CHESS upgrade to further disrupt platforms - ifa

United States, step aside please. China has arrived. And it has taken the top spot in the world. Well, at least in the chess world.

At a time when few sports events are taking place because of the pandemic-driven lockdown across the world, chess appears to be thriving, mostly because it does not involve physical contact, can be played online, and can be followed online by its dedicated viewership. So when the rest of the sporting world is on ice, FIDE, the world chess federation, managed to pull off an online Nations Cup that ended in cybersphere on Sunday with China winning title after a 2-2 tie against the United States in the final despite having lost to the U.S in the earlier league phase because it had topped the round-robin tables.

A few observations about the Nations Cup and current chess world: Clearly, China has eclipsed Russia as the new chess superpower, although Russia remains in the top league, finishing fourth behind third-placed Europe. India, a new entrant to the chess high-table, finished fifth, and a Rest of the World team, created to accommodate brilliant players such as Irans Alireza Firouja and Azerbaijans Teimour Radjabov, whose countries do not have the kind of bench strength/depth to throw up an ELO 2600+ plus team, finished last.

The fact that the United States itself is a top contender is both a surprise and not a surprise. Thank immigration and immigrants for this. The US does not produce too many home-grown Bobby Fishers. The top US players are mostly of foreign origin: Its top-ranked player is Miami-born Fabiano Caruana, who is an Italian-American dual citizen, followed by Philippines-born Wesley So, and Japan-born Hiraku Nakamura. Youve to wonder if this robbed the title scrap with China with some of the needle of the kind that existed during Fishers clash with Boris Spassky in Reykjavik at the height of the Cold War. The fact that China pipped US to the title at a time ties between the two countries are at a nadir should chuff Beijing and irk Washington, except for the fact that few people in Trumps America cares squat about chess. They are out to make America great again in other spheres, by other means.

The surprise package, afaiac, is India. It is only in recent years that the land in which chess was born has become a major chess force, having grown from one Grandmaster in the late 1980s (the affable Vishy Anand) to 65 Grandmasters now fifth behind Russia, Germany, Ukraine, and United States. But its power is uneven and top-heavy, as was demonstrated at the Nations Cup, where it should have finished higher on the strength of Vishy Anands brilliance but for the sub-par performance of the promising younger stars, notably Vidit Gujarathi, Indias third-ranked player (Vidit himself recognized this in an apologetic tweet).

What can one say about Vishy Anand? His is now a remarkable story, and not just because he is a former five-time, multi-format world champion. He turned in an incredible performance, remaining undefeated against several players RANKED ABOVE HIM in world standings. Two things to note here: Anand is now officially ranked 15th in the world, and some think his best days are behind him. Also, Anand is now 50 and is considered over the hill by some. The current chess world is dominated by players in their 20s and 30s, and even teens such as Irans Alireza Firouja are seen as rising stars and future world champions. To draw a comparison (admittedly somewhat unfair), imagine Sunil Gavaskar or Kapil Dev playing alongside Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma in the current Indian cricket team.

Sure, chess is largely a mental game, but it also calls on immense reserves of physical stamina, not to speak of technology now, what with players taking recourse to computer engines in their preparations. But as the Nations Cup showed, Anand is a canny old fox, still at the top of his game, and you could not get a better demonstration of this than his brilliant 17-move skewering of Russias Ian Nepomniachtchi, ranked 5th in the world (ten places above Anand) and 20 years younger than him. Anand also defeated Azerbaijans Radjabov (ranked 11th and playing for the Rest of the World team) and drew with world #3 Chinas Ding Liren and world # 7 Frances Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. It is an incredible result for the chess worlds senior statesman, although the overall Indian performance was disappointing to those who aimed higher.

Anands game against Nepomniachtchi is currently scorching the chess world and is seen as something of a masterpiece. I will let the chess pundits describe it in comments, along with a most insightful commentary by Anand himself. Bravo maestro!

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Link:

China pips US in world chess at a time their ties are at a nadir - Economic Times

CHENNAI: Former world champion Viswanathan Anand on Thursday registered his first win in the ongoing FIDE-Chess.com Online Nations Cup, beating Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi in just 17 moves in a fifth round match that ended in a 2-2 draw.

In its second match of the day, India went down to USA 1.5-2.5 in the sixth round with B Adhiban's loss at the hands of Wesley So proving decisive.

Anand underlined his class by getting the better of Nepomniachtchi in just 17 moves to set the tone for India in the tie against Russia.

However, after Adhiban and D Harika drew their games against Sergey Karjakin and Olga Girya respectively, Vladislav Artemiev salvaged a draw for Russia with a superb win over P Harikrishna.

In other games in round five, China beat USA 2.5-1.5 while Europe defeated Rest of the World by a similar margin.

In the sixth round, China continued its domination by thrashing Rest of the World 3.5-0.5 to maintain its position at the top with 11 match points and 16.5 board points.

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Online Nations Chess: Anand wins but Russia hold India 2-2 - Times of India

We want to know your opinion! Which is the best game in history?

We are pleased to announce Chess.com's "Best Chess Game" tournament. We've identified 16 of the greatest and most acclaimed games ever and seeded them into our tournament bracket.

Every other day, we'll post a new battle on our social media pages, and YOU have to vote for the game that you think is best. We'll tally the votes and update our bracket here. Stay tuned to see the entire tournament progress!

Easy!We're going to post, every two days, a battle on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at 9 a.m. Pacific Time / 18:00 Central European Time. If you want to vote, just follow the instructions in the battle and cast a vote with a like, retweet, or share. Votes will be tallied when the next battle is posted, and the winning game will advance to the next round in the tournament.

Easy, right?

Round of 16:

Quarterfinals:

Semifinals

Final:

Here is the games list with all the masterpieces (with a link to our analysis board) to decide the BEST game.

If you have any questions or doubts, please, post comments here.

See the original post:

The Best Chess Game Of All Time Tournament - Chess.com

5/8/2020 Many people are staying home now, more than ever. Baking bread has become a very popular activity in these times. Did you know that there is a cake recipe called the "chess pie"? Did you also know, that Robert Fischer has once received a cake, which looked like one of his played chess games? Chess can be such a sweet experience.

Master Class Vol.1: Bobby Fischer

No other World Champion was more infamous both inside and outside the chess world than Bobby Fischer. On this DVD, a team of experts shows you the winning techniques and strategies employed by the 11th World Champion.

Grandmaster Dorian Rogozenco delves into Fischers openings, and retraces the development of his repertoire. What variations did Fischer play, and what sources did he use to arm himself against the best Soviet players? Mihail Marin explains Fischers particular style and his special strategic talent in annotated games against Spassky, Taimanov and other greats. Karsten Mller is not just a leading international endgame expert, but also a true Fischer connoisseur.

More...

John Denver - Take Me Home, Country Roads

The chess pie is a southern pie from the United States of America, and that might be the only thingwe can say for sure about this piece of cake. Most of thesources on this pie lead to Martha Washington'sBooke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats. The former first lady probably got this book out of England, where it was written in the 17th century, according to culinary historian Karen Loft Hess.

There are several funny and interesting theories of why the pie is called chess pie:

The most popular explanation is this one, taken fromSarah Belk [Simon and Schuster:New York] 1991 (p. 367-8) fromLynne Olver'sfoodtimeline.orgwebsite:

The cheese etymology seems the most likely one, because in old cookbooks, cheesecakes and pies that were sometimes made with cheese sometimes without (referring to cheese in the textural sense - lemon card, for example, is often referred to as lemon cheese), are often included in a single category. A selection of cheeseless "cheese" pastries inHousekeeping in Old Virginia(1879) are made with egg yolks, sugar, butter, milk, and lemon juice - very much like chess pie filling. Sometimes called "Cheesecake Pudding" (the filling is made of yolks, brown sugar, butter, nutmeg, and brandy or rum) is baked in a crust in small tins..."

Whatever the mystery about the chess cake origin is, it is no secret that it tastes delicious! Probably because it is mostly made of sugar...

A friend of mine gave me this recipe:

From Thelma's Treasures by Susanna Thomas

1 9" pie crust

recipe in the book

Filling:

Meringue Topping:

Furthermore, here is a YouTube video by Southern Living:

The amount of sugar at 0:40 makes me cry

Endgames of the World Champions from Fischer to Carlsen

Let endgame expert Dr Karsten Mller show and explain the finesses of the world champions. Although they had different styles each and every one of them played the endgame exceptionally well, so take the opportunity to enjoy and learn from some of the best endgames in the history of chess.

Bobby Fischer won the US Championship 1963/64 with 11/11 points! He was just 20 years old when this extraordinary result was accomplished. Never again could this 100% perfect score be reachedin the US Championship.

Game number ten against Pal Benko in particular is remarkable. So remarkable, that a chess cake with an actual position of the game was made for Fischer after the tournament.

Here is a tweet by Douglas Griffin with Bobby Fischer's chess cake.

Suren Aghabekyan tells us even more about the BobbyFischer chess cake story:

The US Championship table from the ChessBase Mega Database

All the games played in the US Championship 1963

And the special "cake" game

More here:

Chess pie and Fischer's cake - Chessbase News

Alexandra Botez, Courtesy Botez

Sabina Foisor after winning the 2017 U.S. Womens Championship. Photo: Austin Fuller

Former U.S. Womens Champion WGM Sabina Foisor will face WFM Alexandra Botez on Saturday, May 9th at 5:30 ET in a blitz and bullet match at twitch.tv/botezlive while also raising money for US Chess Women and our Online Programs.

Sabina Foisor has been a rigorous advocate for chess as well as for US Chess specifically, attending many girls events and being the debut guest at our online girls club, where she showed her famous crowning queen sacrifice at the 2017 US Womens Championship.

[Event "US Championship (Women)"][Site "St Louis, MO USA"][Date "2017.04.09"][Round "11"][White "Apurva Virkud"][Black "Sabina-Francesca Foisor"][Result "0-1"][ECO "E32"][WhiteElo "2262"][BlackElo "2272"][PlyCount "62"][EventDate "2017.03.29"]1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. Qc2 O-O 5. Nf3 c5 6. dxc5 Na6 7. c6 bxc6 8. g3d5 9. Bd2 d4 10. Ne4 Rb8 11. Nxf6+ Qxf6 12. Bg2 e5 13. O-O Bf5 14. Qc1 Bxd2 15.Qxd2 h6 16. Qa5 c5 17. b3 e4 18. Nd2 Rfe8 19. Rad1 Rb6 20. Nb1 Qe7 21. e3 Bg422. Rd2 Nb4 23. exd4 e3 24. fxe3 Qxe3+ 25. Kh1 Rf6 26. Rg1 Qxg1+ 27. Kxg1 Re1+28. Bf1 Rfxf1+ 29. Kg2 Rg1+ 30. Kf2 Ref1+ 31. Ke3 Rf3+ 0-1

You must activate JavaScript to enhance chess game visualization.

We also used this beautiful game at the December 2019 Girls Club in Orlando, Florida as a model for human chess, where kids on breaks from the round became the actual pieces.

Shahade and Carolina Blanco playing out Sabina Foisors game using kids as chess pieces! Hosted by the Altons. Photo Dawn Saverese

Sabina has been very active lately in coaching and content creation. You can find her on twitch.tv/sabinafoisor as well as on YouTube, instagram and twitter.

Alexandra Botez has been working with US Chess Women since January of 2020 to host weekly matches on her popular channel twitch.tv/botezlive. Last week, she and Womens Program Director Jen Shahade hosted Isolated Queens II, which was covered in this sports article and will be recapped extensively on CLO later in the coming days.

Botez vs. Foisor Match Details:

Time: May 9th, Saturday 5:30 PM ET

Where: Twitch.tv/botezlive

Format: First to 20 points, the first ten games at blitz (3-0) and the remainder in bullet

Prize Fund: $500, with a $350/$150 split, donated by Ian Maprail Silverstone

Donations: 60% of onstream donations will go to support our online and womens programming. 40% will go to future matches.

You can listen to podcast interviews with Alexandra Botez and Sabina Foisor on Ladies Knight.

If you cant make the match, you can find it archived afterwards on twitch.tv/botezlive. Watch recent episodes on our YouTube channel or the Isolated Queens replay here.

Read more:

Botez and Foisor to Face Off on May 9th to Raise Money for Online Education - uschess.org

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rwanda Chess Federation will, for some time, continue to be in limbo as it awaits new office bearers.

Elections to usher in a new leadership team could not be held last month because of the lockdown.

It is still not clear when the chess fraternity, or designated club delegates, will convene or organise an election.

The last pollwas held in April 2016.

At the time, delegates elected Kevin Ganza, Rugema Ngarambe, Alain Niyibizi and Christella Rugabira, as president, vice president, secretary general and treasurer respectively, for a four-year term.

Ganza during a past local chess competition. / File

A new election was supposed to be held towards the end of April. It did not happen.

One of the other pending issues was deciding the way forward after qualifiers to pick Rwandas flag bearers for the 44th Chess Olympiad were postponed, in March.

At the time, the federation planned to have a third phase of qualifiers this month. As things stand, however, there is no guarantee it will go as planned.

Ganza toldTimes Sportthat: "We have come to a conclusion that we shall let the new committee coming in soon decide the way forward."

But, regarding when an election will be organised, he admitted, much depends on when the pandemic ends "though the General Assembly could decide otherwise, and we organize elections online."

The COVID-19 pandemic brought life to a standstill as countries fought to contain its spread to save life while, at the same time, trying to prevent economic turmoil.

World over, new cases are slowing down. But, many in the chess world know that resumption of play soon may not be possible.

Late March, the World Chess Federation (FIDE)postponed the 2020 Olympiad, a biennial chess tournament bringing together teams from all over the world, which was scheduled to be held in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, from August 5 to 18.

The FIDE Council was deeply concerned about the growing COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on people's lives.

All other events earlier scheduled to be held in Moscow and Khanty-Mansiysk mid this year were also rescheduled to the summer of 2021.

Luckily, about a week before lockdown was enforced in Rwanda, in early March, the 2020 edition of the national inter-schools' chess tournament was successfully concluded.

In February, the annual Rwanda Open chess tournament, internationally billed as the biggest chess event in the country, was also held.

However, the lockdown meant that regular training meetings in Kigali ceased and no regular physical tournament, small or big, could be held.

"Coronavirus just stopped the qualifiers, the Genocide Memorial Chess Tournament (GMCT) and usual players' meetings for practice," Ganza further noted.

The annual GMCT is another top international event on the local calendar.

Chess thriving online

With in-person tournaments shut down, reports indicate that top chess players are competing online and millions of amateurs are joining in the fun all over the world.

"Some players have started online meetings for practice," Ganza quickly pointed out, signaling that all is not lost.

Indeed, like others around the world, Rwandan chess enthusiasts have embraced the new virtual reality. They are having fun, learning and improving.

This past week, the Online Nations Cup, the strongest ever online team chess event attracted the worlds top players together from their homes across multiple time zones. It featured teams from India, China, USA, Russia, Europe and a World team.

Rwandan players too are warming up to the idea of playing in online events during the Coronavirus crisis.

Sharing their experiences and life under quarantine as they patiently wait for normal life to return, some shed light on the positive side.

In a telephone interview from home in Rwamagana District, Amen Divine Ikamba, a senior five student at Collge Sainte Marie Reine-Kabgayi, in Muhanga District, told this publication that during lockdown, she is "trying to read different chess books and playing games."

She added: "This lockdown ruined the schedule of chess this year; like the competitions which were supposed to take place."

But the teenager is not deterred. She is steadily working on her game, online.

"My objectives are reaching as far as I can and improving chess in different areas. I think I'll have much more knowledge which will help me in my chess journey," Ikamba added.

Alexis Ruzigura, a senior chess player, noted that, first, "online chess helps you size up your ability; you know how good you are, or where you need to improve."

Alexis Ruzigura. / File

Ruzigura said: "COVID-19 has brought a new dimension to sport so we should evolve and adapt."

"Luckily for us, Rwanda has embraced technology, meaning young players can now improve their game remotely, online."

jkaruhanga@newtimesrwanda.com

Originally posted here:

Covid-19 and chess in Rwanda: Where things stand - The New Times