At the opening ceremony of FIDE Grand Prix in Hamburg, FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich made two important announcements.
Arkady Dvorkovich, FIDE President, said: “We are officially opening the third leg of the FIDE Grand Prix Series, organized by World Chess. This time we are running a tournament in Hamburg, a city known for its chess culture. We are grateful to our Hamburg colleagues for their hospitality and help. We hope that the games will please all chess enthusiasts”.
The main events of World Chess Olympiad 2020 will be moved from Khanty-Mansiysk to Moscow. Khanty-Mansiysk will host the first-ever Chess Para-Olympics.
Two countries – UAE and Argentina – submitted the bids to host the FIDE World Chess Championship Match 2020.
The Candidates’ Tournament will determine the next challenger for current World Champion Magnus Carlsen for the world chess championship crown.
Filipino-American chess whiz Wesley So toppled on Saturday chess world champion Magnus Carlsen to snag the first World Fischer Random Chess Championship.
So, who previously played for the Philippines before moving to the US in 2014, beat Carlsen 13.5-2.5 in the final match of the three-day series.
Unlike standard chess, Fischer Random games start with the pieces jumbled, forcing players to drop strategies based on standard chess openings.
“”I’m very happy! It’s my favorite type of chess, and it hasn’t been popular until the last couple of years,” So said. “I usually win tournaments the first time and never again.”
So said Carlsen would have easily beat him in standard chess.
“I’m very happy to be the world champion but it doesn’t change much. I think he was shaken in our game 2, and wasn’t able to bounce back, but he congratulated me right after the match, he is a great sportsman,” So said.
FIDE World Junior Championship U20 officially ended on Friday, October 25th, 2019 in New Delhi, India. The competition brought together the strongest teenagers from across the globe. The open section had 94 players, including 15 grand masters taking part in the event. The girls’ section attracted 95 participants.
After 10 rounds in the open section a student of Texas Tech University, Evgeny Shtembuliak (Ukraine, 2577) was a half-point ahead of Aram Hakobyan (Armenia, 2561), Miguel Santos Ruiz (Spain, 2560) and Shant Sargsyan (Armenia, 2580). In the final 11 round, the leader beat Volodar Murzin and took the title with an excellent score 9 out of 11, whereas Sargsyan prevailed in the key game with Santos Ruiz and became second.
In the girls’ section two-time World U18 Girls Youth Championship winner Polina Shuvalova (Russia, 2412) reeled off four victories in a row in the second part of the event and by the final round created a full point margin from her main competitor Mobina Alinasab (Iran, 2239). By making a draw with black in the final round Polina secured gold. The Iranian won her final game and finished a half-point behind the champion.
FIDE World Junior Championship in New Delhi is heading down the home stretch to the second round this week. The strongest teenagers from across the globe enjoyed a rest day on Sunday before starting the second round of the tournament yesterday with 5 more games to go.
After six rounds Evgeny Shtembuliak (Ukraine, 2577) and Aram Hakobyan (Armenia, 2561) are tied for the lead in the open section with 5 points each. They are paired to meet in round 7, with Shtembuliak having White. Both leaders have been undefeated so far. Eight players including the 14-year old Indian prodigy, the winner of the World Youth Championship U18 Praggnanandhaa thrill the leaders with a half-point.
Mobina Alinasab (Iran, 2239) is the sole leader in the girls’ section with 5.5 points. She conceded only half-a-point in the encounter with the World Youth Chess Championship U18 winner Polina Shuvalova (Russia, 2412) who is breathing down the leader’s neck with 5 points.
FIDE World Junior Chess Championship (U20) 2019 officially kicked-off on Tuesday in the Indian capital New Delhi. This is the second big event happening in India in the month of October after the successful completion of the World Youth Championships a few days ago. The open section of the World Junior has 94 registered players including 78 titled players with 15 GMs and 31 IMs. Notably, there are also 18 players above the rating of 2500.
The girls’ section attracted 95 participants including Amin Tabatabaei (2642), Zhu Jiner (2507), as well as, other top-rated U20 women players across the globe are taking part in the tournament as rating favourites in their respective categories.
The top seed of the tournament is GM Amin Tabatabaei, even though Iranian GM Tabatabaei is the favourite, he will be provided stiff resistance from Aravindh Chithambaram and Karthikeyan Murali, second and third seeds of the competition respectively.
The newly crowned World Youth Chess Championship winners U18 Open and Girls category 14-year old Praggnanandhaa and Polina Shuvalova are also in New Delhi and will try to repeat a dose of their Mumbai success. The participants will play 11 rounds Swiss system; the world junior champions will be crowned on October 25.
D.V. Sundar, honorary Vice-President of FIDE in his speech highlighted that “during the elections, I was in the opposing team of Arkady Dvorkovich. We lost to a very desirable candidate. A few minutes after the defeat Dvorkovich came to me and said, I do not know if you are going to fight for the Vice President’s spot, but I would like to have you as an honorary Vice President. At that point I realized that he was not a politician but a statesman. Later Dvorkovich confirmed this by saying, “It doesn’t matter to me whether someone gave me a vote or not. The most important thing is to work together for the development of chess” said Sundar.
FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich congratulated the Indian Chess Federation on the successful organization of the recently completed World Youth Championship and stressed the importance of youth and junior chess.
Most Vietnamese might assume that the country’s first female billionaire would be standoffish and difficult to know. But Nguyễn Thị Phương Thảo, who is one of 25 women on Forbes’ 2019 Asia’s Power Businesswomen’s list, is admired for her friendly manner and desire to support and inspire younger generations.
Born in Hanoi in 1970, Thảo, CEO and president of Vietjet Air, is known in Southeast Asia as a powerful female leader with internationally renowned achievements in the aviation sector.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in finance and credit and a PhD in economics from universities in Russia, Thảo began trading commodities in Eastern Europe and Asia.
While working as a trader, Thảo predicted that demand for air travel would rise dramatically in Vietnam. In 2011, she launched the budget airline VietJet Air and took it public in February 2017. Since its launch, the airline has been a roaring success, and has helped put air travel within the reach of millions of Vietnamese.
As the only woman to have started and run her own commercial airline, Thảo epitomises the values of the “Powerful Businesswoman” who defies stereotypes and breaks barriers.
Besides her renown in the aviation sector, Thảo, with her knowledge and enthusiasm in finance and banking, has greatly contributed to improving HDBank, a private joint-stock commercial bank, where she is the permanent vice chairwoman of the board of directors.
As a key shareholder of the bank, she was instrumental in helping HDBank become one of the top 40 banks in Vietnam. Prior to her work with HDBank, she was one of the founders and leaders of Techcombank and VIB.
Her stunning achievements are no surprise to those who have known her since she was a student in Russia.
“Our young years are filled with memories about a lovely girl with a sweet Hanoi accent and an energetic singing voice that kept the cold away in Russia through the song ‘A Million Roses’,” a businessman recalls.
“At that time, we all could see that she had a talent in business, which would help her career in the future. Years later, we were not surprised to see that she began work at Techcombank and VIB, and then had great achievements at HDBank,” he adds.
For Thảo, who was also on Forbes’ Asia’s Power Businesswomen 2016 list, “nothing is impossible”.
“I have always aimed big and done big deals. I have never done anything on a small scale. When people were trading one container of goods, I was already trading hundreds of containers,” she says.
Inspiring leader
Despite her great achievements and fortune, Thảo is modest and easygoing, especially with young students and the poor. She often stops to chat with customers and spends a great deal of time and money on charity activities.
With a desire to create connections between owners of large enterprises and younger generations, Thảo often meets and shares experiences with young people to send the message that they play a vital role in the bright future of Vietnam.
She also devotes time to many charity programmes such as “Wings of Love”, which each year offers scholarships to poor students and gives clothes to children living in remote areas.
Thảo has been a sponsor of the HDBank International Chess Tournament and HDBank Chess Cup
For the past 10 years, Thảo has been a sponsor of the HDBank International Chess Tournament where the world has been introduced to top Vietnamese players such as Quang Liêm and Trường Sơn. She is also a sponsor of HDBank Chess Cup and the HDBankFutsal tournament, which promotes the physical fitness of Vietnamese youth.
Through her frequent meetings and visits with local and international students, she continues to support and nurture future generations of leaders. At meetings with Thảo at HDBank and Vietjet, many international students at Imperial College London, Harvard Business School, and Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College have all expressed their admiration of Vietnam, calling it “an Asian dragon that has awakened”.
What international students admire most is Việt Nam’s culture and dynamic society, its creativity, and its breakthroughs in private businesses in an emerging Asian economy, Thảo says.
With a staff of nearly 30,000 people at Vietjet, HDBank and HDSaison, Thảo is viewed as a “captain” whose philosophy of business is trusted and admired by her employees.
Her lasting philosophy is to create jobs and employee happiness and advancement, as well as better serve customers, contribute to the State budget, and develop the economy to achieve a civilised and prosperous community.
Thảo also takes seriously her corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, with her desire to contribute to charities and make a better community. She has organised, for example, a series of praying ceremonies and has built historical monuments that follow the motto “when you drink water, think of its source”, to pay tribute to the people who have sacrificed their lives for the homeland during wartime.— VNS
Nguyễn Thị Phương Thảo, CEO of Vietjet Air, Viet Nam’s first self-made female billionaire, is well known in Asia and has been named one of 25 women on Forbes’ list of Asia’s Power Businesswomen 2019.
The gender gap in sport may be narrowing, but in the game of chess women may never reach the levels of their male counterparts – according to the world’s best female player.
University of Oxford student Hou Yifan said the cerebral game won’t get a female world champion for decades because women “are less focused” than men, don’t train as hard and are at a physical disadvantage.
The 25-year-old, who is often referred to as the Queen of Chess’, has opened a row in the normally genial world of chess.
Her comments follow a controversial claim by English Grandmaster Nigel Short that men and women should just accept they are “hard-wired very differently”.
Short, who was widely criticised for his stance, said he “would have been ripped to shreds as a misogynist dinosaur” if he’d said the same as Hou.
Speaking to chess.com, Hou said: “Theoretically, there should be a possibility that a woman can compete for the title in the future, but practically I think that the chances of this happening in the next few decades are very small.
“I do think the average rating of female players could improve, but the gap between the top women right now and the players competing for the world title is really quite large.
“But if you look at any sport, it’s hard to imagine girls competing at the same level as men.
“I think there is a physical aspect because chess exhausts a lot of energy, especially when games last 6-7 hours, and here women could be more disadvantaged.
“But in general, I think women train less hard at chess compared to men while they’re growing up.
“In China, girls tend to think more about university, and then things like family, life balance… while boys are more focused and persistent on that one thing.
“This makes a big difference. The ones who put greater effort in achieving better results. But I also think there are external factors too.”
In chess, there is the World Championship which is open to all and is currently held by the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen. Since its inception in 1886, all 16 undisputed champions have been men.
There is also a parallel Women’s World Championship and women-only tournaments designed to encourage female participation in the sport.
Hou Yifan Plays against World Champion Magnus Carlsen
However, while Hou is a four-time winner of the women’s crown, in recent years she has chosen not to compete in women’s events in order to compete against higher-ranked players.
Hou, who became a Grandmaster aged 14, is the number one ranked female player but number 87 among men and women. She is one of just three women, along with Judit Polgar and Maia Chiburdanidze, to have cracked the world’s top 100.
However, there is a big gap between Hou’s rating and the top men. By comparison, Hou’s current rating is 2659, while world number one Carlson is more than 200 points higher on 2876.
The next strongest female player is another Chinese player, Wenjun Ju, way back at world number 288 with a rating of 2586.
Hou said: “Growing up, female players are told, ‘If you win the girls’ title, we’ll be really proud of you, and this is a great job!’ It’s unlikely that any of them were told, ‘No, you should be fighting for the overall title!’
“Girls are told at an early age that there’s a kind of gender distinction, and they should just try their best in the girls’ section and be happy with that. So without the motivation to chase higher goals, it’s harder for girls to improve as fast as boys as they grow up.”
Asked if she believes there are any gender differences in the way men and women play the game, Hou added: “To me, in all aspects of life, sometimes women and men tend to see the same thing from completely different perspectives, and that also comes into chess.
“I suspect that the male perspective on chess favours men, perhaps when it comes to the emotional aspect of the game and making practical and objective decisions.
“To put it simplistically, I think male players tend to have a kind of overview or strategy for the whole game, rather than focusing too much attention on one part of the game. It could be interesting to explore this further. I need to do more research to answer this properly!”
The World Youth Chess Championship was held at the Renaissance Mumbai Convention Centre Hotel in Mumbai, India is in the books. Youngsters from 66 countries were competing in the Girls U14, Open U14, Girls U16, Open U16, Girls U18, and Open U18 categories.
The championship ended on a high note for India. The home team won 7 medals more than any other country including one gold in the Open U18 category taken by the 14-year old prodigy Praggnanandhaa. Red-hot from this event the Indian teenager is heading to New Delhi to participate in the U20 Championship that starts on October 14.
Russia netted 5 medals, producing 3 champions. It is worth mentioning that Polina Shuvalova successfully defended her title in the Girls U18 category and became the two-fold champion. Leya Garifullina scored an equal amount of points with Nazerke Nurgali but won gold thanks to better tie-breaks in the Girls U16 category.
The FIDE International Organizer Seminar was held in Oman, Muscat, from the 24th to 27th August 2019.
It was organized by the Oman Chess Committee in cooperation with Asian Chess Federation, and under the auspices of FIDE Events Commission. The venue of the seminar was the Oman Sports Complex.
The Lecturer was FIDE Lecturer IO/IA Mahdi Abdulrahim (UAE), FIDE Rules Commission Chairman. The Language of the Seminar was Arabic. The lectures were held daily from the 24th to 27th August 2019, from 17.00-21.00 Muscat Time (+4 GMT). The examination test was held on the 27th of April 2019.
Thirty (30) participants were registered from two (2) federations, BRN and OMA. Twenty-eight (28) of them passed the examination test which was held after all lectures on the 27th of August 2019. The Seminar will give FIDE IO norm, according to the Regulations for the FIDE Events Commission after the approval of the next FIDE Presidential Board meeting.
The coffee break was provided by the organizer every day. All participants were provided with a file covering all seminar materials.
The following participants passed the exam successfully:
The newly united Pakistan Chess Federation held the Lahore District Junior Qualifying National Rated Chess Championship last September in Lahore. Pakistan Chess Federation Chairman Abdus Salim and Vice President/Delegate Amin Malik awarded medals in the presence of Chief Guest Naser Ullah Rana, Director of the Pakistan Sports Board Coaching Centre Lahore (PSBCC).
Pakistan players are benefiting with more chess activity following the recent merger of the factions in the Pakistan Chess Federation initiated by Asian Chess Federation president Sheikh Sultan bin Khalifah Al Nahyan and Secretary General Hisham Al Taher.
U-14 Boys Category : Gold: Muhammad Ibrahim, Silver: Bilal Naeem Lukhesar, Bronze: Ismail Mustafa Syed
U-16 Girls Category : Gold: Maiza Shabkhez
U-16 Boys Category : Gold: Muhammad Abdullah Farid, Silver: Sher Shah Mir, Bronze: Muhammad Rustam Ali Ch
U-18 Boys Category : Gold: Ahmad Zaheer, Silver: Ramooz Tahir, Bronze: Khizaer Hassan Khan
U-20 Girls Category : Gold: Palwisha Javed
U-20 Boys Category : Gold: Huzaifa Ahmed, Silver: Abdullah Ahmed, Bronze: Umair bin Asim
Pakistan Chess Federation Chairman Abdus Salim and Vice President/Delegate Amin Malik awarding medals to the winners in the presence of Chief Guest Naser Ullah Rana, Director of the Pakistan Sports Board Coaching Centre Lahore (PSBCC).
Group photo with winners in the various categories.
Players benefit from the unity in Pakistan chess with more chess activity.
