I Intl Chess Festival to be held in Atyrau Aug 15-24
The prize fund of the event is 13,257,500 tenge.
As many as 300 amateur chess players will participate in the festival. 260 participants have already registered for the event. Among them are well-known international grandmasters and international masters from 9 countries: the U.S., the Netherlands, Lithuania, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Russia.
The goals of the tournament are popularization and development of chess in Kazakhstan, propagation of healthy life style and upgrading skills of young chess players and search for gifted youth.
The opening ceremony is scheduled for August 16. The festival will include three tournaments – Atyrau Open, Atyrau Juniors and Atyrau Blitz, the results of which will be evaluated as per the Swiss system.
The games will be broadcast live on www.chess.com and www.chess24.com websites and on official website of the Festival www.atyrauchessfestival.kz.
Master classes and a simultaneous display are expected to be held too. The festival will also host the first seminar of international arbiters, where judges, after an examination, will be awarded the FIDE Arbiter title.
According to organizer of the festival, FIDE International Master and Woman Grandmaster Dinara Saduakassova, the mission of the event is to contribute to comprehensive development of chess as a sport in Kazakhstan. «We hope and believe that the tournament will become a bright event uniting the representatives of various countries and ages. I wish success and victory to all the participants of the festival!» she noted.