Budapest Olympiad: Indian Grandmaster training Eritrea and Mauritius teams

Chennai: Indian chess Grandmaster (GM) Priyadharshan Kannappan hailing from Tamil Nadu is training the Open and Women’s teams of Eritrea and Mauritius for the upcoming Olympiad at Budapest.

“For the upcoming Olympiad, I am virtually coaching the teams of Eritrea and Mauritius as part of the FIDE Trainers Commission programme to develop the game in areas with developing chess interest,” Kannappan, who has an an ELO rating of 2,553, told IANS.

“Eritrea and Mauritius are ranked 150 and 185, respectively, in the World Chess Rankings as a team. In this Olympiad, they are ranked 155 and 165 in the Open Category, respectively,” he added.

Interestingly, Mauritius’s highest rated player is Chinasamy Devarajen, most probably having his roots in Tamil Nadu, with an ELO rating of 1,975.

“The training is for 16 hours and based on what I know, there are three trainers from India who are working with other country teams as well,” Kannappan said.

This is part of a programme run by the FIDE Trainers Commission. They choose a list of countries which they categorise under 'developing chess countries', and those teams can ask for training support to boost their performance in the Chess Olympiad, Kannappan said.

The coaches who are FIDE Trainers can apply to train these teams, and then FIDE matches coaches to appropriate teams based on chess level, time zone difference and teams' interest on which trainer they are interested to work with, he added.

The remuneration for this project is paid to the coaches directly by FIDE.

“I am training 20 players in total (Open and Women) in a group class setting for 16 hours. Both countries' Open and Women's teams join the same session. We started last week and 10 out of 16 hours of training have been completed,” Kannappan said.

As per the schedule, the training should be completed before the start of the Olympiad. Kannappan will be completing his assignment by the coming Friday.

Indian International Master Vishal Sareen is a Councillor of the FIDE Trainers Commission.

The other Indian chess masters who are training other country's players for the Olympiad under the FIDE programme are GM Ankit R Rajpara, GM Anurag Mahamal, and IM Vishal Sareen.