FM Frank Yee will be de­fend­ing his ti­tle at Knights Chess Club's open tour­na­ment which starts on Thurs­day April 18 at Rhand Cred­it Union build­ing in Port-of-Spain.

Yee not on­ly won the pres­ti­gious Knights Open last year but cap­tured the na­tion­al ti­tle as well. This year, the tour­na­ment will record a land­mark in the his­to­ry of Knights as it will be the 40th con­sec­u­tive edi­tion of the event pre­sent­ed by the coun­try's old­est ac­tive chess club.

The tour­na­ment, which will be played on sev­en con­sec­u­tive Thurs­days, has ben­e­fit­ed over the years from in­no­va­tions made un­der the pres­i­den­cy of the late Lu­cio Arau­jo. The two most sig­nif­i­cant are the con­sid­er­able mon­ey prizes at stake. Al­so, the event is FIDE-rat­ed, giv­ing play­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­hance their Elo rat­ing or to ac­quire one.

Apart from the na­tion­al cham­pi­onship, the Knights Open has be­come the most pop­u­lar open chess con­test in the coun­try, reg­u­lar­ly at­tract­ing a large cross-sec­tion of play­ers.

The sev­en-round Swiss will again be spon­sored by En­de­co (T'dad) Ltd and will of­fer a wide range of cash prizes. The six main prizes are: $1,500, $1,000, $700, $500, $400 and $300. Four spe­cial prizes of $200 each will al­so be at stake: Best Ju­nior Un­der 20; Best Fe­male; Best Un­der-17 Elo; Best Un­rat­ed.

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