The cur­rent year should be a mem­o­rable one for the sport of chess as it marks the eight­i­eth an­niver­sary of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Chess As­so­ci­a­tion. Among the many ac­tiv­i­ties be­ing planned to mark the oc­ca­sion are the coun­try's first In­ter­na­tion­al Mas­ters tour­na­ment to­geth­er with an Open Cham­pi­onship sched­uled to be held in Port-of-Spain in Ju­ly-Au­gust. Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion re­ceived from the As­so­ci­a­tion, the Mas­ters event is ex­pect­ed to field GMs and IMs from across the globe.

"We are tar­get­ing at least one play­er from every con­ti­nent," Son­ja John­son, TTCA pres­i­dent, told DR. "Play­ers have al­ready been ap­proached from Africa, South Amer­i­ca, North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope."

She not­ed that the Open tour­na­ment will fea­ture top play­ers from T&T and the Caribbean and, apart from the op­por­tu­ni­ty of play­ers achiev­ing high­er rat­ings, will al­so serve as prepa­ra­tion for the re­gion's play­ers in ad­vance of the Olympiad in Sep­tem­ber."

Al­so be­ing planned is a com­mem­o­ra­tive an­niver­sary pub­li­ca­tion "which will high­light key in­for­ma­tion on the TTCA in­clud­ing its his­to­ry, achieve­ments, play­ers' pro­files and ac­counts of the ac­tiv­i­ties and events of the As­so­ci­a­tion over the past eighty years."

The pres­i­dent added: "We have set up a steer­ing com­mit­tee which has al­ready en­gaged the clubs and mem­bers of the chess com­mu­ni­ty, past and present, in our bid to ob­tain rel­e­vant and au­then­tic con­tent for this pub­li­ca­tion." Al­so, the com­mit­tee in­tends to reach out to the gen­er­al pub­lic to ob­tain da­ta on chess ac­tiv­i­ty through­out the coun­try in­clud­ing chess in schools and chess in com­mu­ni­ties.

"All this, of course, is in ad­di­tion to our core ac­tiv­i­ties which in­clude host­ing our na­tion­al qual­i­fiers and cham­pi­onships as well as prepar­ing for the coun­try's par­tic­i­pa­tion in the World Chess Olympiad in Baku, Azer­bai­jan, in Sep­tem­ber," John­son ob­served.

A bul­letin is­sued by the As­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent an­nounces its theme for 2016: "Build­ing pro­duc­tive, dis­ci­plined com­mu­ni­ties...one move at a time". The doc­u­ment al­so gives a brief his­to­ry of the or­gan­i­sa­tion since it was found­ed in 1936 and be­came af­fil­i­at­ed to FIDE 36 years lat­er.

"Since our in­cep­tion," it re­calls, "we have been in­stru­men­tal in de­vel­op­ment of the sport of chess in T&T." Apart from pro­duc­ing many top class play­ers, the As­so­ci­a­tion has had "many ex­cep­tion­al achieve­ments, in­clud­ing medals at the World Chess Olympiad at the team and in­di­vid­ual lev­els, Sports­man of the Year and Ju­nior Sports­man of the Year awards and, more re­cent­ly, the award of Ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Year.

"As an or­gan­i­sa­tion, we have al­so striv­en to in­crease the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of our beloved sport. This mile­stone al­so presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to re­flect on where we are as an or­gan­i­sa­tion as we strive to make our mark in build­ing our so­ci­ety through the sport of chess."

The TTCA man­age­ment team is dis­cussing oth­er com­mem­o­ra­tive pro­pos­als such as a ma­jor awards cer­e­mo­ny and an 80th an­niver­sary lo­go com­pe­ti­tion. It ob­serves, how­ev­er, "giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty we are on­ly able to ex­e­cute on these plans with the sup­port of the wider com­mu­ni­ty both in terms of time and re­sources."

In clos­ing, the pres­i­dent ap­pealed to mem­bers of the chess com­mu­ni­ty to "come on board and par­tic­i­pate in these ac­tiv­i­ties and sup­port our ef­forts to en­sure the TTCA re­main rel­e­vant and per­forms at an even high­er stan­dard."