205 players participating in 15th Chess Olympiad for the blind

Visually challenged Indian chess players take part in the All India Chess Tournament last year

Chennai - In all, 205 competitors, including 19 International Masters and over 90 FIDE-rated players representing 26 countries will be taking part in the 15th Chess Olympiad for the blind commencing here on Friday.

The team championship, to be played on a nine-round Swiss league format, is being sponsored by the Tata Group. it will see two Indian teams, comprising four players and a reserve, in the fray with I.M. Shekar Sahu in dual role as the non-playing captain and coach.

There are several firsts in this Olympiad. The games are to be shown live on http://www.aicfb.in; speech-enabled chess clocks will be used and the AICFB is launching the online chess playing portal, a brainchild of Charudatta Jadhav, which also is speech enabled. Besides, daily bulletins of all the completed games will be distributed to the participants in the DAISY format.