• Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared open the FIDE 44th Chess Olympiad at Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai. 

• FIDE organised the first Official Olympiad in 1927 which took place in London. The prestigious competition is being hosted in India for the first time and in Asia after 30 years. The Philippines hosted it in 1992.

• The FIDE 44th Chess Olympiad is being held in Mamallapuram near Chennai from July 28 to August 10. 

• The mascot for the event is named ‘Thambi’ — a knight wearing traditional Tamil attire, which symbolises brotherhood. 

• With 187 countries participating, this will be the largest participation in any Chess Olympiad.

• India is also fielding its biggest contingent in the competition comprising 30 players across six teams.

• With powerhouses Russia and China missing, India will be fielding three teams each in the Open and Women’s sections respectively.

• The Indian ‘A’ team, seeded second behind the star-studded USA is likely to be among the main challengers for the top prize along with Norway led by Magnus Carlsen and Azerbaijan.

• The youthful India ‘B’ squad coached by R.B. Ramesh, is seeded 11th.

• India, which won a bronze in the Open event in 2014 in Tromso, Norway, tied for gold with Russia in the 2020 online Olympiad and secured a bronze in the 2021 edition. 

The Indian teams: 

Open Section 

A: Vidit S. Gujrathi, P. Harikrishna, Arjun Erigaisi, S.L. Narayanan, K. Sasikiran.

B: Nihal Sarin, D. Gukesh, R. Praggnanandhaa, B. Adhiban, Raunak Sadhwani.

C: Surya Shekhar Ganguly, S.P. Sethuraman, Abhijeet Gupta, Karthikeyan Murali, Abhimanyu Puranik.

Women’s Section

A: Koneru Humpy, D. Harika, R. Vaishali, Tania Sachdev, Bhakti Kulkarni.

B: Vantika Agarwal, Soumya Swaminathan, Mary Ann Gomes, Padmini Rout, Divya Deshmukh.

C: Easha Karvade, Sahithi Varshini, Pratyusha Bodda, P.V. Nandhidhaa, Vishwa Vasnawala.

FIDE

• The International Chess Federation (Federation Internationale des Echecs) is the governing body of the sport of chess, and it regulates all international chess competitions. It was founded in 1924 in Paris. In 1999, FIDE was recognised by the International Olympic Committee as a global sporting organisation.

• The UN General Assembly has proclaimed July 20 as World Chess Day to mark the date of the establishment of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) in Paris in 1924.

• FIDE awards several performance-based titles to chess players.

• They are Grandmaster (GM), International Master (IM), FIDE Master (FM), Candidate Master (CM), Woman Grandmaster (WGM), Woman International Master (WIM), Woman FIDE Master (WFM), Woman Candidate Master (WCM).

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