Chennai: This is the 14th edition of the World blind chess Olympiad sponsored by the TATA Group is organised by the All India Chess Federation for the Blind. India is the first Asian country to host this event, in the history of blind chess. 205 delegates from 26 countries have confirmed their participation, which includes 19 International Masters and more than 90 FIDE Rated players.
This is a team championship played on a nine round Swiss league format and the winning country will be crowned as world chess Olympiad champion. There are several firsts in this Olympiad, the first time in the history of Blind chess the games are shown LIVE on the web http://www.aicfb.in the next one being the introduction of speech enabled chess clocks are to be used during the event. Further, the AICFB is launching the online chess playing portal, the first of its kind, is a brainchild of Charudatta Jadhav, which also is speech enabled. The daily bulletins are distributed of all the completed games to the participants in the DAISY format (audio with navigation). Together these compose the uniqueness of this event.
The event is sponsored by TATA group viz., TATA Sons, TATA Consultancy Services, TATA Tele Services, TATA Chemicals and TATA Trust which has joined hands to support this event. Hotel Le Royal Meridien is the hospitality partner with all the players being accommodated in the playing venue itself. ONGC is the associate partner of this event and we thank the Government of India, Ministry of Sports for extending financial support and the Tamil Nadu State Chess Association for the logistic support.
India is scheduled to field two teams India “A” and India “B” respectively, comprising of four players and one reserve. The Indian team as per their National ranking will be chosen from the last National Championship for the Blind viz., 1. Ashwin Makwana (Gujarat, National Blind Champion), 2. Kishen Gangolli (Karnataka), 3. Gaurav Gadodia (Maharashtra), 4. Darpan Inani (Gujarat), 5. Sri Krishna Udupa (Karnataka), 6. Swapnil Shah (Maharashtra), 7. Shirish Patil (Maharashtra), 8. Darshan Patel (Gujarat), 9. Atul Kakade (Maharashtra) and 10. K Sashidhar (Karnataka).
International Master Sekhar Sahu is the coach and the non-playing captain of the Indian team.
