Shri.Rajeev Kumar Seth,SBI General Manager,Network1, Local Head Office, Hyderabad, making the inagural move in the National Rapid Chess Championship 2009
Shri.D.V.Sundar Secretary All India Chess Federation, hand overing the SBI Trophy to Shri.Rajeev Kumar Seth,SBI General Manager,Network1, Local Head Office, Hyderabad. Shri Bandhakavi NMDC DGM, Shri Ramji ONGC Regional Manager and International Master Lanka Ravi look on.
Jubilee Hills International Centre is presenting SBI National Rapid and NMDC Blitz Chess Championships 2009 will be held from 2nd June to 5th June 2009 at Jubilee Hills International Centre, Hyderabad, which would be organized by Cyber Chess Academy on behalf of AICF under the auspices of A.P. Chess Association.
These events, among the largest of their kind to be held in the state after a long time, would carry a total prize fund of Rs.2,52,000.
Several GMs including India’s youngest Grandmaster Parimarjan Negi, Sandipan Chanda, Tejas Bakre, R.B. Ramesh, Neelotpal Das, and IMs including Konguvel, V Koshy, C.S. Gokhale, Himanshu Sharma, M.R. Venkatesh, S. Satyapragyan, Rahul Shetty, Imocha, Sriram Jha, D.K. Sharma, Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury, Somak Palit, B.S. Shivananda, R.R. Laxman, P.D.S. Girinath, WGM Aarthie Ramaswamy, and around 100 other international level players would be participating in this event.
The chief arbiter for these tournaments would be Prof Anantharaman, assisted by K.V. Sharma. Other arbiters like Subba Raju and Vijaya Raghavan will be supervising the pairings and related matters.
State Bank of India is the principal sponsor for the National Rapid Championship, while the principal sponsor for the National Blitz Championship is NMDC. The rapid tournament would be inaugurated on 2nd June by SBI officials, while the blitz championship would be inaugurated by the NMDC officials.
For the first time, the rapid matches will be given live coverage on the internet, using Monroi devices imported from Canada. The games will be projected on various screens to give the spectators a clear view of the games.
The rapid tournament commences on 2nd June 2009, and ends on 4th June 2009. On June 2nd, the matches would begin at 14:00 and close at 19:00. On 3rd and 4th June, the matches would begin at 9 a.m. and end at 5 p.m. The closing ceremony for the rapid tournament is at 17:30 on 4th June. The blitz tournament would start at 9 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. on 5th June. The closing ceremony for this event would be held at 16:00 on the same day.
In press conference held today afternoon the following two announcements were made:
Special Entries to AP players: To promote chess in a big way in the state of Andhra Pradesh, organizing secretary Mr. Lanka Ravi has announced that the district associations that has 2 players will be provided with additional 2 slots.
Benefits of the event: Also, the winners of this championship will be likely to be selected for coming Asian Rapid Chess Championship.