Chess Olympiad 2022: Huge chessboard erected by school children in Chennai

The Chess Olympiad 2022 is round the corner and the excitement just keeps building up.

As a part of the build up for 44th Chess Olympiad to be held in Chennai from July 28 to Augsut 10, a private school in Perambur, erected a 6,400 sq ft mammoth chessboard along with huge banners and with students' faces painted in black and white with chess symbols.

Tamil Nadu Hindu Endowment Minister, Sekar Babu and Chennai Mayor, Priya Rajan inaugurated the chess event in Everyone School at Perambur in Chennai.

As per a report in ANI news aganecy, during the inaugural event, students played the 32 pieces with rich costumes and hats over the chess board.

Eight cut-outs of the Thambi mascot with a height of 14 ft and width of 6 ft were also erected around the Gigantic Chess Board.

Fifty girls in higher classes painted their faces like the chess board wearing a T-shirt with the Thambi mascot whereas 50 other students wore the face masks with the image of the Thambi mascot, wearing white dhotis and shirts.

"This is a great gala Chess event with a very spectacular view for us to see, which was organized on behalf of the 44th Chess Olympiad. We, students, were dressed entirely as 32 chess coins and we also did the chess moves, which was very impressive," said Beevi Fathima, a Grade 9 student of the school.

Prime Minister PM Narendra Modi will declare open the 44th Chess Olympiad at JLN Indoor Stadium, Chennai in his Tamil Nadu visit on July 28 and 29," read a statement from the PMO.

With a record 187 countries taking part with 188 teams in the Open section and 162 in the Women's section, the Olympiad will witness the highest ever participation.

A record total of 30 Indian players across six teams (Three in open and three women) will be participating in the Olympiad. Each team will have five members out of which four will be fielded in each round.

The captain of the team, in most cases non-playing, will decide the team composition. The Olympiad will be an 11 Round Swiss League event. The host countries can field two teams but India could field one additional team in both categories as the total number of teams were odd.

The three Indian open teams are seeded 2nd, 11th, and 17th respectively.

The second-seeded India-1 Open team consists of Vidit Gujrathi, P Harikrishna, Arjun Erigaisi, S.L. Narayan, and Sasikaran Krishnan.

The India-2 Open team members are Nihal Sarin, D Gukesh, B Adhiban, R Praggnanandhaa and Raunak Sadhwani.

The India-3 open team comprises Surya Shekhar Ganguly, S.P. Sethuraman, Abhijeet Gupta, Karthikeyan Murali, and Abhimanyu Puranik.

Incidentally, all the 15 players in the Open Team are Grandmasters.

In the 2014 Chess Olympiad held at Tromso, Norway, India won a bronze medal in the open category, and in the 2020 virtual Olympiad, India won the joint gold medal while in the 2021 virtual Olympiad, India finished with a bronze medal.

Earlier, a test event was held in Chennai to assess the preparedness for the tournament.

A few thousand people took part in an Olympiad special run organised in the city to create a buzz around the multi-nation tournament