Carl Ja­cobs

Start­ing to­day, two nine-round tour­na­ments to be played si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly at Ho­tel Nor­mandie, St Ann's, will go down in T&T chess his­to­ry. They are the ma­jor events mark­ing the 80th an­niver­sary of the sport in the coun­try.

The first con­test, the In­ter­na­tion­al Mas­ters, is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant as it has at­tract­ed sev­er­al GMs and IMs from var­i­ous parts of the world. The sec­ond is an In­ter­na­tion­al Open which sets a dif­fer­ent record, draw­ing a to­tal of 71 play­ers, by far the largest par­tic­i­pa­tion in any com­pet­i­tive chess event in the coun­try's his­to­ry.

The four GMs tak­ing part in the first are Elshan Mora­di­a­ba­di (2597) from Iran, Ilya Zara­gats­ki (2491) of Ger­many, Sri­ram Jha (2422) from In­dia and WGM Sabi­na Francesca Foisor (2260) of the Unit­ed States. A to­tal of sev­en IMs will al­so com­pete in this con­test.

They are Pablo Bali­nas Her­rera (2433) of Chile, Floris Van As­sendelft (2350) of the Nether­lands, Jose Luis Vilela De Acu­na (2337) of Cu­ba, Arthur Sseg­wan­gi (2366) of Ugan­da, Jose Raphael Gas­con Del No­gal (2428), Juan Ar­man­do Rohl Montes (2376) and Ariel Marichal Gon­za­lez (2268) of Venezuela.

One wel­come fea­ture of the IM tour­na­ment is the in­clu­sion of T&T's five-mem­ber men Olympiad squad com­pris­ing na­tion­al cham­pi­on FM Kevin Cu­pid, FM Adri­an Win­ter Atwell, FM Ryan Harp­er, FM Joshua John­son and FM Mario Mer­ritt.

Al­so meet­ing the Mas­ters are FM Al­lan Munro, FM Michael Pouchet, CM Rav­ishen Singh and An­der­son Gor­don to­geth­er with FM Roger Ma­toewi of Suri­name and Sheyas Smith of Ja­maica. These Caribbean "heavy­weigths" who are all rat­ed above the 2000 mark will al­so have an op­por­tu­ni­ty in this up­per-class com­pa­ny to sig­nif­i­cant­ly ad­vance their rank­ing to­wards the Mas­ter lev­el.

Woman In­ter­na­tion­al Mas­ter Sab­ri­na Chevannes of Eng­land is the high­est rat­ed en­trant (2069) in the In­ter­na­tion­al Open. Al­so com­pet­ing in this con­test are four play­ers from Venezuela: CM Ce­sar Ramos Caldera (2028), IM Cleven Je­sus Chiri­nos Cabr­era (2012), IM Ani­bal Gam­boa Gon­za­lez (1991) and Je­sus An­to­nio Blan­co Bautista (1724).

CM Esan Wilt­shire, rat­ed 2089, heads the long list of T&T play­ers con­test­ing the Open.

The first 30 of them are Kishore Ra­mad­har (1987), CM Frank Sears (1950), CM Dev Soon­dars­ingh (1943), Leonard Dun­can (1912), David Jones (1910), Paul Brown (1906), Hay­den Lee (1884), Rick­son Thomas (1879), Mikel Mar­tin (1867), CM Ce­cil Lee (1863), Keevin James (1839), CM Daryl Davis (1827), An­drew Bowles (1812), Si­mon Ram­dath (1808), Ian Ali (1779), WCM Gabriel­la John­son (1768), Ian Grant (1751), Syl­van Seaforth (1748), WCM Adi­ti Soon­dars­ingh (1736), CM Shan­non Year­wood (1721), Alana Safer Ra­moutar (1691), Kelvin Dover (1680), Car­lyle Singh (1666).

The "bat­tles" at Nor­mandie start with round one at 6pm to­mor­row, short­ly af­ter the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny which be­gins at 4 pm. They con­tin­ue through­out the week, fin­ish­ing with round nine next Thurs­day morn­ing and an Open Blitz tour­na­ment in the af­ter­noon.

The stage, then, is set for hold­ing the grand­est feast of chess the coun­try has ever known. The chess play­ing com­mu­ni­ty has the T&TCA to thank for stag­ing the twin tour­na­ments as a once-in-a-life­time 80th an­niver­sary event.

DR can on­ly hope that all goes well, that the tour­na­ments will be trou­ble free, that our ches­sists will emerge stronger and more ap­pre­cia­tive of the unique memo­r­i­al ex­pe­ri­ence and that vis­it­ing play­ers will re­turn to their coun­tries with pleas­ant and last­ing mem­o­ries, re­gard­less of their for­tunes over the chess board.