Chess
Covid-19 forces Indian chess players to withdraw from Asian Continental tournament
The second wave of coronavirus has forced top Indian chess players to withdraw from the Asian Continental Chess Championship which started yesterday
Surya Shekhar Ganguly
The second wave of coronavirus has forced top Indian chess players to withdraw from the Asian Continental Chess Championship which started yesterday. The tournament was supposed to act as a qualifying tournament for the FIDE Chess World Cup 2021, with the top eight players booking their slot at Sochi, Russia.
The Asian Continental Chess Championship is being held in a hybrid format meaning that players were expected to play online sitting in public place under the supervision of an arbiter.
The Times of India reported that the All India Chess Federation (AICF) was looking to assemble the players either in the city of Chennai or Pune for the tournament, but various kinds of lockdown in different parts of the country meant that it could not be materialized which in-turn forced players to withdraw.
However, on the other hand, FIDE has allotted one continental quota for India. The AICF is currently looking at various options to conduct an all-India qualifier in the last week of May to hand out the quota.
