The na­tion’s top play­ers in ten dif­fer­ent "Mind Sports" will line up to par­tic­i­pate in the in­au­gur­al Mind­sport­sTT Games when ac­tion rolls out on Sun­day at the Cara­paichaima East Sec­ondary School for the North, East and Cen­tral Zones start­ing at 10 am.

For the first time in the Caribbean, 10 Mind­sports games which in­clude chess, draughts, scrab­ble, mo­nop­oly, domi­noes, speed Ru­bik cube, su­doku, cross­word, sin­gles pairs all-fours and bridge will be played at one venue at the same time.

At a joint meet­ing called with all the stake­hold­ers for Mind­sport­sTT Games, and all the Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs) in­clud­ing the T&T Chess Fed­er­a­tion ( TTCF), T&T Scrab­ble As­so­ci­a­tion ( TTSA), T&T Draughts and Check­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTD­CA), T&T Con­tract Bridge As­so­ci­a­tion ( TTC­BA), T&T All-Fours Fed­er­a­tion (TTAFF), Mo­nop­oly As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MATT) and in­clud­ing the new­ly formed Speed Ru­bik Cube As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SPRATT) ex­pressed sup­port for this ini­tia­tive as it rep­re­sents a uni­fied ap­proach by all NG­Bs to de­vel­op the in­tel­lec­tu­al minds of cit­i­zens in which the event was cre­at­ed to pro­mote mind sports to all cit­i­zens from as ear­ly as five years old to be­yond 60 years of age.

Ja­son Man­ga­roo, pres­i­dent of Mind­sports TT in­di­cat­ed that the tour­na­ment is tar­get­ed to­wards nu­mer­ous Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary Schools, Ter­tiary lev­el Uni­ver­si­ties and is open to the gen­er­al pub­lic in every com­mu­ni­ty with­in T&T.

He said that this event will en­sure stronger par­tic­i­pa­tion and a deep­er im­pact with the cur­rent cur­ricu­lum be­ing de­liv­ered with­in class­es and al­so help the gen­er­al pub­lic par­tic­i­pat­ing to have a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the tremen­dous ben­e­fits to them and the re­spec­tive sports.

At the meet­ing, Nish­ka Sew­dass-Man­ga­roo, Prin­ci­pal of the St Michael’s Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege pre­sent­ed a cheque to Mind­sport­sTT as one of the co-spon­sors of the event and stat­ed that her Col­lege is very ex­cit­ed to be part of this event and will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in all the events.

She en­cour­aged oth­er Prin­ci­pals to sup­port this event as this will ben­e­fit stu­dents in their crit­i­cal think­ing, cog­ni­tive de­vel­op­ment and aid in the so­cial­i­sa­tion process.

Lin­coln Per­sad, mar­ket­ing di­rec­tor of Mind­sport­sTT in­di­cat­ed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion has re­ceived tremen­dous sup­port from all the NG­Bs who have since part­nered with Mind­sport­sTT and it was re­fresh­ing to see the en­thu­si­asm shown with this project as it rep­re­sents what co­op­er­a­tion with sports stake­hold­ers can do for the de­vel­op­ment of all the mind games but more so for T&T.

He went on to add that the NGB’s will help Mind­sport­sTT in the man­age­ment of the games and will work to­geth­er with them to make this event tru­ly his­toric.

Fazeed Ab­dool of Mind­sport­sTT in­di­cat­ed that this event of 10 mind sports is open to the gen­er­al pub­lic and will have four age cat­e­gories in­clud­ing 12 and Un­der, 18 and Un­der, Adults Open and Over 60.

For each cat­e­go­ry, cash prizes and tro­phies will be at stake. The prize struc­ture is as fol­lows: In the Over 60 /Adults Open first place gets $3,000 and Chal­lenge Tro­phy; sec­ond re­ceives $2,000, third $1,000 and fourth $500; 18 & Un­der/12 & Un­der: first $1,000 and chal­lenge tro­phy, sec­ond $500, third $300 and fourth $200.

The top 16 win­ners in each sport and cat­e­go­ry will al­so re­ceive medals and cer­tifi­cates of par­tic­i­pa­tion.