To spread the word about the FIDE World Championship match between India’s Viswanathan Anand and Norway’s Magnus Carlsen at Chennai, the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu (SDAT), along with the All India Chess Federation will be organising a series of Chess events between October 27 and 31.
Chess tournaments will be conducted exclusively for bureaucrats, journalists, staff members of the Secretariat, visually-challenged, senior citizens, cine artistes and the general public, said J C D Prabhakar, president of the All India Chess Federation. Tournaments for IAS and IPS officers of Tamil Nadu will be held on Sunday (Ocotber 27).
The winners will receive Rs 50,000 worth prizes. Subsequently another event will be held for journalists and Rs 50,000 has been allotted for them.
On October 28, a chess tournament will be held exclusively for staff working in the Secretariat.
This tournament will be held at the Secretariat itself in the evening to facilitate the participation of all the staff. This too carries a prize money of Rs 50,000.
Chess is possibly the only game where visually challenged players can compete with other professional players.
A separate tournament for the visually-challenged with a total prize money of Rs 50,000 will be held at the Hall of Chess, Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Chennai, on Tuesday (October 29).
Not to leave anyone, another event arranged for senior citizens (over 60 years of age) will be held on Wednesday (October 30).
To add more colour, an exclusive event has been arranged for cine artistes on October 31. The venue for the event as well as the number of prizes will be announced later.
Apart from all the above events, the federation has decided to organise some more in select parks in the city in the coming days. It has been decided to have chess boards at the parks and some of the good players will be there to play chess with anybody who comes to the park. Winners will receive prizes.