A three-member Sri Lankan Team will take part in the Asian Zonal Hybrid Chess Championship 2021, which will commence the Tornelo platform today.
This is also the preliminary event for the FIDE World Chess Cup 2021 for the South Asian region.
Top competitors from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives, Bhutan and Sri Lanka will compete in this event for supremacy.
 |
| Susal de Silva |
This year the event is conducted by the Bangladesh Chess Federation and the event will be held until June 9.
The event will be held according to the Swiss System of nine rounds. The games will be held from 3.00 p.m to 8.30 p.m each day.
The Sri Lankan players will compete from the Chess Federation of Sri Lanka (CFSL) Headquarters in Gangodawila, Nugegoda.
The Sri Lankan contingent will be spearheaded by the national champion Ranindu Liyanage of Ananda College.
The other two members in the Sri Lanka Squad are 15-year-old Susal de Silva of Nalanda College and Buddhika Amarasinghe of SJP Chess Club.
Meanwhile, Uzbekistan Grandmaster Alexei Barsov will train the Sri Lanka Team throughout the event and the Chess Federation of Sri Lanka (CFSL) have already made arrangements to obtain his services while targeting the FIDE World Chess Cup.
Barsov, the 55-year-old Lawyer by education, has been a professional chess player since the early 1990s and is one of the premier players in Uzbekistan.
 |
| Ranindu Liyanage |
For many years he was also the coach of the former FIDE World champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov.
Barsov won several leading chess tournaments in his career and won the Uzbekistani Chess Championships in 2006 and 2010. Barsov also represented Uzbekistan at the Chess Olympiad on six occasions.
“He has played for several European Chess Clubs, including the ones competing in the German Chess Bundesliga and the services of Barsov is going to be a real boost for the Sri Lankan players,” President, CFSL Luxman Wijesuriya told the Daily News yesterday.
“Hybrid Chess means that the players from each country are playing from one venue with a supervision of a local chief arbiter while the player is observed electronically by the tournament arbiters using two cameras through zoom meeting,” he explained.
“All anti-cheating measures are taken and players are advised to adhere to the FIDE player play rules and regulations,” he emphasised.
“If any player or a local arbiter is found guilty in violating fair play rules, FIDE has proposed a 15-year ban from active chess,” Wijesuriya added.
