Chennai set to host 44th Chess Olympiad

New Delhi, Mar 16: Chennai will host the 44th Chess Olympiad, All India Chess Federation (AICF) said on Tuesday. “It’s official now….India will host the 44th World Chess Olympiad 2022 at Chennai,” the AICF Twitter account confirmed.

 

 

This will be the second major world event to be held in the country after the World Championship match in 2013 between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen, the current world No.1.

 

Last month, the AICF submitted a bid to host the Chess Olympiad after the event was moved out of Russia. “Yeah, we are bidding for the chess Olympiad this year. The budget for the event would be USD 10 million (about Rs 75 crore),” AICF secretary Bharat Singh Chauhan had said.

 

 

The Chess Olympiad is a biennial team event, in which teams from some 190 countries compete for honours over a two-week period. The chess Olympiad 2022 was supposed to take place in Moscow from July 26 July to August 8.

 

However, FIDE (the International Chess Federation) decided to move the Chess Olympiad and all other official competitions planned from Russia in the wake of the country’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine. The other events that are moved away from Russia are the first chess Olympiad for people with disabilities and the 93rd FIDE Congress.