Chess players worldwide, some one billion of them, are ecstatic that face-to-face chess has returned. It has revitalized the Chess Olympiad, which is surpassed only in participating nations by FIFA. In 2018, when the last face-to-face Olympiad was held in Batumi, Georgia, 180 nations participated. One hundred and fifty-one-women’s teams were represented, including Guyana. This year, Chennai, India, hosts the Chess Olympiad beginning in July and Guyana is dispatching men’s and women’s teams.
Seventeen-year-old University of Guyana’s computer science student Ricardo Narine is the 2022 Junior Chess Champion. He defeated 19-year-old industrial engineering student Ethan Lee in a furious final game of the two-best-in-three series playoff last Saturday. In the Junior Championship, the scores were tied at 6.5 points each from nine games. Lee won the first game of 15 minutes duration; then Narine took the 10-minute and five-minute games.
