THE Guyana Chess Federation’s National Junior Championship Qualifiers will get underway on Saturday morning at the Guyana National Stadium, Providence.

The four-day event, which was last held in 2019, will be played from April 9 to 12.

The top 10 players at the end of the Qualifiers will be invited to play in the National Junior Championships (at a date to be decided). The Championships will determine who will be awarded the title of National Junior Champion.

Andre Jagnandan is the reigning National Junior Champion. He earned the title at the age of 19 in 2019. The 2020 National Junior Championships came to an abrupt halt in March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since Jagnandan is no longer eligible (age-wise), a new junior champion would be crowned this year. Almost 50 junior players have already signed up to compete.

Among them is Keron Sandiford, who won the Best Junior prize at the recent GAICO Grand Prix Tournament, along with Ethan Lee, Jaden Taylor, Oluwadare Oyeyipo, Rajiv Lee, Ricardo Narine, Jessica Callender and Kishan Puran.

Sasha Shariff, who won the Women’s Championship in 2020 and also represented Guyana numerous times in international tournaments, including the Olympiad in 2019, will also be competing.

The Qualifiers will be a total of seven rounds of classic matches. Each game will be played on a time control of 90 minutes with 30-second increments after each move.

The tournament is open to all local chess players aged 19 years or younger on January 1, 2022 and will be FIDE-rated.

Players interested in competing must register by 17:00hrs on April 8 on guyanachess.org and pay a registration fee of $1 000.

The tournament will be supervised by FIDE arbiters Irshad Mohamad, John Lee and Anand Raghunauth. Boards one to six will be broadcast live on the guyanachess.org website as well as on YouTube during every round.

According to a release from GCF, “it is thrilled to have DeSinco Ltd once again partnering to provide this opportunity to the young Guyanese chess players who are eager to commence over-the-board play and expresses its heartfelt thanks to Ms Alicia DeAbreu, Chief Executive Officer for also assisting with the sanitisation aspect of the event”.

GCF would also like to express thanks to the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport for providing the use of the National Stadium for this annual event.