Blind Chess Olympiad Begins in India Today

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2012

Hi everyone,

It is for the first time that the Chess Olympiad for the Blind is going to be held in Asia - India to be precise. Titled 'IBCA Chess Olympiad for the Blind 2012', the event is being organised by the All-India Chess Federation for the Blind (AICFB), under the aegis of International Braille Chess Association (affiliated to FIDE) & All India Chess Federation at Chennai's Hotel Le Royal Meridien, from August 9-19 August. The event is sponsored by TATA group. India is the first Asian country to host this event, in the history of blind chess.

A total of 205 delegates from 26 countries have confirmed their participation, which includes 19 International Masters and more than 90 FIDE Rated players. There are several firsts in this Olympiad, the first time in the history of Blind chess the games are shown LIVE on the web http://www.aicfb.in, the next one being the introduction of speech enabled chess clocks are to be used during the event.

Further, the AICFB is launching the online chess playing portal, the first of its kind, is a brainchild of Charudatta Jadhav, which also is speech enabled. The daily bulletins are distributed of all the completed games to the participants in the DAISY format (audio with navigation). Together these compose the uniqueness of this event.

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