The event, featuring 75 players from 15 countries, will begin Thursday and end Saturday, two days before the birthday of the Premier

South Asian Chess Council, in collaboration with Golden Sporting Club and Canadian University of Bangladesh, is going to organize Joytu Sheikh Hasina International Online Chess Tournament to mark the 74th birthday of the Bangladesh Prime Minister.

The three-day event, featuring 75 participants from 15 countries, will begin Thursday and end Saturday, two days before the birthday of the Premier.

Bangladesh Chess Federation will be providing technical and logistic support.

A total of 12 Grandmasters confirmed their participation so far.

Three Bangladeshi GMs out of five Ziaur Rahman, Enamul Hossain Razib and Reefat bin Sattar will be taking part, while Niaz Murshed and Abdullah al Rakib have been ruled out due to health and personal reasons.

BCF general secretary Syed Shahabuddin Shamim informed that this will be the first international chess competition of such format hosted by Bangladesh.

He said, Some clubs arranged online tournaments before but this is different. Here neutral pairings of the participants will be ensured. Three international arbiters, one each from Bangladesh, Iran and Philippines will conduct the games.

Shamim also said Indian GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly is enlisted as the top-ranked player of the event.

Along with 49 from the host country, other participants are from Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore.

BCF and South Asian Chess Federation president IGP Benazir Ahmed will inaugurate the event from the CUB premises via zoom.

To reveal the details, a press conference was held at Hotel Westin in Dhaka Tuesday in the presence of Chowdhury Nafeez Sarafat, chairman of CUB, and BCF vice president.

Prize money $6,000 will be distributed to the winners while the top three Bangladesh performers will get $1,500 as special prize.

See the article here:

Int'l online chess event to mark 74th birthday of PM Hasina - Dhaka Tribune