The 44th Chess Olympiad held at Chennai is set to will conclude with the 11th and final round on the 9th of August, Tuesday. It will be followed by the closing ceremony.
The Olympiad which is being held in India for the first time has a record number of teams taking part in the Open and women's sections. In this event, 185 countries around the world participated.
In the closing ceremony, former India captain MS Dhoni will attend as chief guest and is expected to be the star attraction.
Dhoni's association with Chennai dates back to the year 2008 when he took the captaincy of the IPL team Chennai Super Kings.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin will preside over the closing ceremony.
FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich and recently elected deputy president Viswanathan Anand will be attending the event.
Chess Olympiad and Chennai
The Olympiad was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 28 at the Nehru indoor stadium where the valedictory will also be held.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, led the chess governing body FIDE (International Chess Federation) to move the event from there to Chennai, India.
As of 2022, the 76 Grandmasters (GM) in India included 17 from Chennai, and of the five Indian players in the top 55 in the world, two are from Chennai, according to FIDE (the International Chess Federation).
The following teams participated in the event -
Men's team:
- A: Vidit S Gujrathi, P Harikrishna, Arjun Erigaisi, S L Narayanan, K Sasikiran.
- B: Nihal Sarin, D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa, B Adhiban, Raunak Sadhwani.
- C: Surya Shekhar Ganguly, S P Sethuraman, Abhijeet Gupta, Karthikeyan Murali, Abhimanyu Puranik.
Women's team:
- A: Koneru Humpy, D Harika, R Vaishali, Tania Sachdev, Bhakti Kulkarni.
- B: Vantika Agarwal, Soumya Swaminathan, Mary Ann Gomes, Padmini Rout, Divya Deshmukh.
- C: Easha Karvade, Sahithi Varshini. Pratyusha Bodda, P V Nandhidhaa, Vishwa Vasnawala.
