Chess: Online Asian Nations Cup Under-14 Years (Open & Girls) Teams Championships 2021

The Asian Nations Cup for Under-14s in Open and Girls categories, organised by the Chess Federation of Sri Lanka (CFSL), will be held on March 27, 28 and 29 at the Chess.com platform. 

The event is conducted by the Asian Chess Federation, and is a new event created by the regional governing body to promote the Youth Chess Team category. 

The event will be in two categories, Open where Boys and Girls can participate and a separate event for girls only. 

A team should comprise of four players and a reserve.

More than 50 teams from 20 Asian countries have confirmed their participation for the event.

Among the participating countries are Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Laos, Maldives, Malaysia Mongolia, New Zealand, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar and UAE while Sri Lanka will field three teams each in the Open Teams and Girls Teams categories.

The events will be held on Swiss System for teams in 9 rounds with 15 minutes given for a player per game and 10 second increments for each move he play. 

The event is held with all precautionary measures to prevent cheating. 

"Players are allowed to use laptops or desktop computers only and they should play along in a room facing a wall. A camera or a webcam is compulsory and they have to open the camera and microphone in a zoom meeting at all times of play. The arbiters will be carefully observing the players while playing through this zoom meeting. All players are required to share their screen in zoom and all games will be sent to experts for checkingm" Luxman Wijesuriya, the President of CFSL, stated.

CFSL will offer medals and trophies to winners while a DGT Chess clock will be awarded for the members of the winning teams. 

The Sri Lanka team is selected from the CFSL Online Youth Open and Girls Chess Championships 2021 held in last two months. 

Live streaming of the total event is arranged through the CFSL Facebook page with commentaries by Sri Lankan National Chess champions.

The opening ceremony of the event was held on Friday at 6.00pm followed by the technical meeting. 

Competitions will be held at 11.30am, 1.30pm and 3.30pm from March 27 to 29. The event will wind up at 8.00pm on the final day after the virtual awards ceremony.