FIDE Mas­ters Frank Yee, Mario Mer­ritt and Keron Cabralis will start as fa­vorites on Sat­ur­day, when the 16th an­nu­al Lu­cozade/Pal­adins Open Chess Com­pe­ti­tion plays off among a field of 45 top lev­el lo­cal com­peti­tors.The Lu­cozade/Pal­adins Open is the fore­run­ner to the an­nu­al na­tion­al fi­nals and lo­cal ches­sists will be us­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty as a warm-up.Last year's cham­pi­on Mar­cus Joseph will not be de­fend­ing the cov­et­ed Lu­cozade Tro­phy, hav­ing to trav­el abroad. How­ev­er, 2009 win­ner Frank Yee, will be look­ing to re-take the ti­tle. His biggest chal­lenges are to come from Mario Meritt and Keron Cabralis. Good per­for­mances are al­so ex­pect­ed from Rav­ishen Singh, Sean Per­ry­man and Leonard Dun­can, all who are among the 11 fi­nal­ists for the up­com­ing Na­tion­al Chess Cham­pi­onship in Oc­to­ber.Match­es will be played on the three Sat­ur­days be­gin­ning Au­gust 13, with the fi­nal round on Sun­day 28th, to be fol­lowed by the Prize­giv­ing Cer­e­mo­ny.

The win­ner in the open sec­tion will get the Lu­cozade Chal­lenge Tro­phy; and the top ju­nior will get the Prakash Per­sad Tro­phy. They will al­so re­ceive cash prizes.Na­tion­al women's cham­pi­on Adi­ti Soon­dars­ingh is wel­com­ing all chal­lengers as she looks to­ward re­tain­ing the ti­tle she has won for the last five con­sec­u­tive years. Strong com­pe­ti­tion is ex­pect­ed to come from Ja­van­na Smith, new fe­male na­tion­al un­der-14 cham­pi­on Na­jarah Muhammed and fe­male na­tion­al un­der-8 cham­pi­on Shemeli­ah James.Match­es will be played at the Al­gi­co Plaza, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain for two rounds on Sat­ur­days, start­ing at 9 am and 6 pm and at 10 am on Sun­day 28th, the fi­nal round. The prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny be­gins at 5 pm, when Lu­cozade Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will con­grat­u­late the win­ners and hand out tro­phies and cash prizes.Keenan Hen­ry, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Lu­cozade, said his com­pa­ny is proud to be as­so­ci­at­ed with the Chess fra­ter­ni­ty, as his prod­uct will fos­ter healthy bod­ies while build­ing the healthy minds need­ed to play the roy­al game:"I can as­sure you of our con­tin­ued sup­port in the forsee­able fu­ture, be­cause this is an im­por­tant part of our cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."

Chess sets and clocks will be pro­vid­ed and Lu­cozade drinks will be dis­trib­uted for the play­ers. The tour­na­ment is or­gan­ised by Pal­adins Chess Club.In­ter­est­ed play­ers can con­tact Bhisham Soon­dars­ingh (761-7091) and An­drew Bowles (741-3982) to reg­is­ter for the tour­na­ment.T&TCA First Vice Pres­i­dent Bhisham Soon­dars­ingh, a founder-mem­ber of Pal­adins Chess Club said, "Ours is one of the old­est Clubs of the As­so­ci­a­tion, and we con­tin­ue to con­tribute to ma­jor events on the T&TCA an­nu­al cal­en­dar. This 16th open tour­na­ment will again at­tract play­ers from all over the coun­try."