Nirmal Das, a PWD engineer from Tripura and an avid chess enthusiast, has created an online chess tournament for the numerous chess lovers like him.
The creation of the online tournament came to his mind during this boredom induced by the COVID-19 lockdown.
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The tournament was launched on March 28 and till date, Das has successfully organised 69 international contests where 975 participants from across the globe have displayed their chess skills.
Not just from India, but players from Bangladesh, Brazil, Japan, Nepal, Germany, South Korea, and the Philippines have participated in this online chess tournament.
The chess tournament had a humble beginning with 15 local participants, which also included his son and some of his friends.
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The news about the tournament spread like wildfire and within a week some 70 players from Tripura signed up in the tournament.
This was just the beginning as numbers began to increase and in the next week, around 80 chess enthusiasts from Assam and other states of the northeast signed up for the tournament.
The tournament then began to have a pan India presence as chess players from Delhi, Karnataka, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu were the next to sign up for the tournament.
Soon, the numbers increased to 450 and as the days went by, players from several foreign nations also began to join this online tournament.
Initially, several games and competitions were held twice a day, however, now it is conducted once at 8 pm daily.
This is primarily due to the lockdown relaxations imposed by several countries. .
The tournament is divided into four formats- bullet, blitz, rapid chess and classical.
For the first three tournaments, the duration is of 2 hours and for a classical chess tournament, the duration is of 2:30 hours.
The top seven players of the day are featured in the “honours” list every day.
However, if you are an Indian then you can’t just join the tournament.
First, you will have to download the Aarogya Setu app first and then only you will be able to take part in this online chess tournament.
For foreign nationals, however, there is no such condition.
If you are interested to test your chess skills then why don’t you sign up at lichess.org and be a part of this wonderful online tournament…
Just for your information, several foreign and Indian players have a Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) rating of over 2,000- stating that there are many quality players playing this tournament.