Welcome to the FIDE newsletter

Welcome to the FIDE Newsletter #16. In this issue, we bring to your attention some interesting initiatives that connect chess with history, with social projects, and even with fashion. We also include a couple of topics related to chess in schools, like the announcement of our partnership with the ISF, and the activities related to World Teachers' Day. Among the brief news from our member associations, we report on the election of new Presidents for the Serbian, Slovakian and Swedish chess federations.

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FIDE enters a partnership with the ISF

Last week, FIDE signed a partnership agreement with the International School Sport Federation (ISF), the international governing body for school sport, which comprises children between the ages of 13 to 18.

Based in Belgium, the ISF has been organizing international competitions to encourage education through sport and student-athletes since its foundation in 1972. ISF was recognized by the IOC in 1995, and it currently has 113 members which compete in 45 different sport disciplines. Many of these sports have their own World Schools Championship every two years, while some others are part of the bi-annual Gymnasiade.

“The partnership between FIDE and The International School Sport Federation is a natural fit, since our values and core mission align perfectly”, explained the FIDE President, Arkady Dvorkovich. “Both institutions are members of the Olympic family, and as such we consider sport as a way to promote inclusion, development, education, and gender equality. Chess is a great tool to improve educational outcomes and it keeps gaining recognition in school programs all over the world, while ISF’s goal is to encourage education through sport and student-athletes. It is a great satisfaction to enter this partnership agreement, and I believe that both the ISF and FIDE will be reinforced by joining efforts in many future initiatives.”

ISF is currently conducting its first-ever virtual world schools championship: the World Schools Championship Online Chess 2020, an online tournament organized for school-going youth aged 13-17. This competition managed to attract 340 young chess players from 39 countries, representing five continents.

You can read the full announcement and the exact terms of the agreement in a joint statement published on the FIDE website.
Håkan Jalling, President of the Swedish Chess Federation.
PHOTO: Lars OA Hedlund
Brief news from National Federations

SWEDEN
Last week, Håkan Jalling was elected the new President of the Swedish Chess Federation, the 13th in the history of this organization, founded in 1917. “Sveriges Schackförbund“ has approximately 40,000 registered players, and it has recently moved its offices to Uppsala.

In an interview published at the website of the Swedish Chess Federation, Håkan explains that the main challenges he will face are related to the new scenario created by the coronavirus pandemic, citing the safe resumption of over the board events as one of his priorities. Pretty much like everywhere else, the country’s top players have been affected by the economic disruption, being deprived of the possibility of competing at tournaments with money prizes. However, the new President is optimistic about the future. “Chess is basically a fantastic product and well suited for sponsors. Who could not want to be involved in making Sweden smarter?“

You can read the full interview on the website of the Swedish Chess Federation.


SERBIA
The Serbian Chess Federation has also elected a new president, Dragan Lazic. The extraordinary assembly of the Chess Federation of Serbia was held in the Amphitheater of the College of Business Economics and Entrepreneurship PEP in Belgrade, where Mr. Lazic was elected with 34 votes in favor, and 1 abstention. Slavoljub Jocic, Jovan Obradovic, and Jovan Vujasinovic will be members of the Board of Directors, until April 2022.

With a Bachelor's degree in economics, Dragan is an experienced professional in finance management and business planning, having been a regional manager for Credit Agricole Serbia for more than six years.

More information on the website of the Serbian Chess Federation.


SLOVAKIA
The Slovak Chess Federation also held elections this weekend, which resulted in a new President: Milan Roman. And entrepreneur and chairman of a chess club in Skalica, Milan has the intention to modernize the federation, expanding and bringing the game to as many people as possible. "We have to work with children, for whom chess can lay the foundations for their future life since the game develops their logical skills and critical thinking". Along with him, Ladislav Šipeky, Štefan Blaho, Rastislav Nemečkay, Rastislav Diviak, and Ján Kocúr, were also elected members of the board of the Slovenský Šachový Zväz.

More information on the website of the Slovak Chess Federation.


ANGOLA
It was with great sadness that we learned last week about the passing of IM Pedro Aderito, from Angola. He was just 44 years old. One of the biggest chess talents in the continent, Aderito was a junior African champion in 1993, and he won a total of six national championships, remaining Angola’s top player until just a few months ago. He represented his country at the Chess Olympiads, All African Games, African Individual Chess Championships, and the World Cup.


WALES
It is with great pleasure that we learned that Kevin Staveley, Director of Home Chess for the Welsh Chess Union, has been honored with the award of the British Empire Medal in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours list. The award is a reward for his services to chess in Wales, and a well-deserved recognition to Kevin's dedication to chess for over 40 years.

More information on the website of the Welsh Chess Union.


COLOMBIA
Our colleague Luis Pérez Carrillo, President of the Colombian Chess Federation since 2009, has been appointed a new member of the executive board of the Colombian Olympic Committee. With almost 40 years of experience in sports management and administration, he was the Technical Director for the Junior World Championships successfully organized by Medellin in 1996. Luis is also a member of the Planning and Development Commission at FIDE.

More information on the website of the Colombian Chess Federation.
Luis Perez Carrillo. PHOTO: Colombian Olympic Committee.
World Teachers' Day

Held annually on 5 October since 1994, World Teachers' Day commemorates the anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers, and it aims at raising awareness of the importance of the role played by teachers all over the world. Educating future generations is one of the highest responsibilities and it can’t be taken seriously enough.

The occasion was the perfect excuse to express our gratitude to all those teachers who are already working to bring chess to the classroom, but also to reach out to other schools and school principals and encourage them to follow suit.

During that day, FIDE launched a small campaign, sending a presentation about the educational benefits of chess to approximately 120 schools from all over the world, monitoring the Twitter hashtag #WorldTeachersDay, and dedicating to this topic some special posts in all our social media channels.

This campaign allowed us to learn about many chess-in-schools initiatives we hadn’t heard about before. A notable example is teacher Betty Mwemderaki, of Budaka Primary school, in eastern Uganda. Betty is the patron of the chess club in her school and has committed countless hours volunteering with DIDA Sports Organization, a non-profit organization based in London that focuses on using sport as an educational tool. DIDA stands for "Develop, Inspire, Discipline, Achieve".

“For more than one year, she has assisted us with our in-school chess program activities. She traveled with two of our DIDA Chess in Schools tournament winners to a SOM Inter School chess championship in Mityana last year. Even during this COVID lockdown, she continues to support the chess initiative by having kids from her school come over to play chess at her home in the evenings”, explains DIDA on its Facebook page.

International Days present a good opportunity for this kind of PR activity, and we would like to encourage our member federations, and chess promoters in general, to use them in our favor to promote chess. You can find a complete calendar on the website of the United Nations.
Chess meets history

When it comes to promoting chess, one of the biggest problems we face is the lack of visibility. Chess is too often played behind locked doors, and that doesn’t help to make the game more popular or attract new players.

That’s why, at FIDE, we are paying special attention to all possible solutions to tackle this problem. In our previous issue, we told you about a project that aims at bringing chess to parks and public spaces. Now, we would like to show you two similar initiatives by the Turkish Chess Federation, which brought chess to some of the most emblematic landmarks in the country.

On October 1, in 17 districts of Antalya, chess was taken to several historical places under the project "Chess meets history". About a thousand players took part, with chess boards being placed in Alanya Castle and the ancient cities of Phaselis, Perge, and Finike, among others. The Turkish Chess Federation is planning to expand this project to all historical points of the country.

"Chess meets history" is the perfect complement for another project, “Chess in Streets”, that was held for the sixth time this year between September 12-20. Hundreds of players from all over the country took part under the motto “put on your mask, keep your distance and make your move”, and playing chess in parks, squares, and other public spaces.

In 2005 the Turkish Ministry of Education introduced chess in schools. With the support of Türkiye iş Bankası, more than 60,000 teachers were trained and about 4 million children learned to play. TCF is now the biggest sports federation in Turkey with more than 400,00 members.

More information on the website of the Turkish Chess Federation.
A new social chess project in Norway

During the past few days, Norway has been hogging all the (chess) headlines. The super tournament Norway Chess is currently ongoing, becoming the first of the top events to successfully overcome the difficulties derived from the postponement caused by the Coronavirus crisis. The Play Magnus Group started trading on the Oslo stock exchange last Thursday, and its $42m initial offering has already been subscribed, making it the largest investment ever in chess. Last but not least, Magnus Carlsen's unbeaten classical streak was finally broken, after an astonishing 125 games and 802 days.
 
Chess keeps gaining prominence in all areas of the Norwegian society, and this is the perfect context for the project "Chess & Society", launched by the Norwegian Chess Federation approximately one year ago. The goal of this initiative is to bring chess activities to a large number of areas in society, "with the over-arching belief that chess has a lot to offer to everyone", explains Geir Nesheim, Secretary-General of the NCF and member of the FIDE Social Commission.

The Norwegian Chess Federation identified 30 different areas or social groups where chess can be introduced. To name a few, the list includes prisons, libraries, the military, science centers, hospitals, universities, and even oil drilling platforms in the North Sea. Developing all these areas at the same time would not be feasible, due to limitations in budget and human resources, so NCF chose to focus on each one of these areas for a fixed period of six months. For instance, they launched a project to bring chess to prisons in February 2020, and 25 out of 40 prisons in Norway have enrolled so far. "We have just launched the Senior Citizens project in September, and although the response is severely affected by COVID19, quite a lot of institutions are already on board", explains Geir.
 
The project has a dedicated website (in Norwegian): 
www.sjakkogsamfunn.no

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Ju Wenjun on the red green carpet


The Women's World Chess Champion Ju Wenjun has been a guest at the 4th edition of the Green Carpet Fashion Awards (GCFA) that took place this weekend. The event was filmed virtually at the "Teatro alla Scala" Opera House in Milan. “This is the first event in history to utilize augmented reality, film, digital, and holograms within its presentation,” stated actor Robert Downey Jr, as he opened the YouTube broadcast of the evening. Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte also made a special appearance.

The Green Carpet Fashion Awards were organized in cooperation with the Shanghai Fashion Week, and Shanghai held an indoor banquet attended by many celebrities like Zhao Xiaotang, Liu Hai Kuan, and of course Ju Wenjun herself.

It is a well-known fact that the reigning World Champion Magnus Carlsen has also done some modeling for a major clothing brand, and the Women’s World Champion wouldn’t mind following his footsteps. "I also like fashion and beauty in my life. It has always been my pursuit to be a woman with both internal and external cultivation. I hope I can learn more about beauty, fashion, and life experience”, said Ju Wenjun after the event.
Nana Alexandria, at the 2018 World Championship in London.
PHOTO: David Llada
Anniversaries

Tomorrow, October 13, women's chess legend Nana Alexandria will turn 71. Nana learned chess at the age of four from her father, a mathematician, and by the time she was 20 she had won three USSR Women's Championships. Nowadays, she is still a very active chess arbiter and promoter.

Upcoming birthdays also include the world's number three Ding Liren, who was born on October 24. Being the highest-rated Chinese chess player ever, Ding has stayed above the 2800 mark for the most part of the past two and a half years. A two-time World Cup runner-up, and winner of the 2019 Sinquefield Cup, he is also a participant in the current Candidates tournament, which is hoped to be resumed very soon.
 
The two top-ranked French players, Marie Sebag and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, are also celebrating their birthdays this month, on October 15 and 21, respectively. Maxime is the current leader of the Candidates tournament and, since the interruption of this competition due to the coronavirus outbreak, he hasn't been very active. Chess fans all over the world, and not only in France, are looking forward to seeing him in action again.  As for Marie, she combines chess competitions with running her own chess club in Paris: "le Petit Puchet". A Grandmaster with a rating of 2438 and a two-time French Champion, Marie is the daughter of a school teacher and she seems to have followed her mother's calling for teaching young kids, an occupation that she enjoys very much. She recently received the title of FIDE Trainer. Joyeux anniversaire, Marie et Maxime!
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