Lifting Guyana’s stature in international chess

At the recent high-level 2018 Biel Chess Festival in Switzerland, Azerbaijani grandmaster Shakhriyar Mamedyarov defeated world chess champion Magnus Carlsen. Mamedyarov, ranked No 3 in the world at 2801 Elo points (Carlsen is 2842), produced some excellent moves to outplay his opponent. Carlsen is preparing to defend his world championship title this November against American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana. In photo, Mamedyarov (left) updates his scoresheet while Carlsen looks on. (Photo: Lennart Ootes)

Two Saturdays ago, the Guyana Chess Federation (GCF), hosted a successful dinner at the Promenade Gardens to support its future chess endeavours. The dinner represented the beginning of a series of fundraisers to lift the ancient game of chess higher and to spread it around to each of the ten regions.

As a start, Guyana will attend the competitive 2018 Chess Olympiad in Georgia, where over 150 nations will participate.

The only way to lift the standard of chess in Guyana is to obtain titles. And the only way to obtain titles, is to play in international chess tournaments. Some years ago, Guyana topped the entire English-speaking Caribbean at the Olympiad in addition to some other respectable chess nations. We intend to surpass that impressive statistic in due course.