The first pawn will be moved at 10:00 hours tomorrow morning when the nine round Swiss System National Schools Championship gets underway at the Queen’s College Auditorium.

According to tournament coordinator Irshad Mohamed, the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports sponsored tournament will be played over two days with the first four rounds tomorrow and the remaining five on Sunday.

The two-category tournament will see players who participated in the Guyana Chess Federation sanctioned tournaments being grouped in category A whilst those who did not participate are in category B.

According to Mohamed participation is expected from out of town schools including players from the Corentyne, Linden, West Bank Demerara, East Coast Demerara, East Bank Demerara and Georgetown.

The Guyana Chess Federation rules will be used.

An additional rule that will be enforced is that all participating schoolchildren are expected to be present in their respective school uniforms.

Schools are also expected to walk with as many chess sets as possible. The principle of a Swiss tournament is that each player will be pitted against another player who has done as well (or as poorly) as him or herself.

The system that will be used in this tournament will see pairings for the first round either drawn at random or seeded according to ratings.

Players who win receive a point, those who draw receive half a point and losers will receive no points. Win, lose, or draw, all players proceed to the next round where winners are pitted against winners; losers are pitted against losers, and so on. In subsequent rounds, players face opponents with the same (or almost the same) score. No player is paired up against the same opponent twice however.

At the end of the tournament if two players are tied on point a progressive order will be done to see who has tallied the most points during the earlier rounds and this will decide the winner unless the GCF initiates a playoff.