World Chess Day: Special Prize Tournament
Before writing this news item I thought I’d research how many ‘World Days’ otherwise known as ‘international days’ there are. I had some idea in the back of my mind that there would be world days for pretty much everything: the world day of ironing boards, the international day of left-handed hamsters etc.
I’m glad to say I was very wrong when it comes down to the official United Nations list of world days.
Looking down the list at https://www.un.org/en/sections/observances/international-days/ the number of world days is remarkably small. Many days in the year do not even have a world day – January for example only has three.
What’s more the subjects of the days are what might be dubbed major league: Peace, democracy, social justice …
And, chess.
Since 1966 FIDE had declared July 20 as World Chess Day but it was only in December of last year that the General Assembly of the United Nations made their proclamation adding it to their official list.
In other words, World Chess Day is now the real McCoy, the real deal.
To mark the day, the English Chess Federation have created a number of events including our youth members playing various variants of chess and the county teams having Blitz battles. We also wanted to create a special event in this Club. This ECF Open Club is free to all and is one way that the ECF reaches out to the wider chess community.
In this spirit we invite you to take part in a 4 hour Arena. Play as many or as few games as you like.
Prizes
1st – A year’s Diamond membership of Chess.com
2nd - 6 months’ Diamond membership of Chess.com
3rd – 3 months’ Diamond membership of Chess.com
Details
When: Monday 20 July: 7pm – 11pm (UK time)
Where: https://www.chess.com/live#r=262594
Who can join: all members of the ECF open club at https://www.chess.com/club/english-chess-federation - you can join the tournament an hour before the start onwards
