Alkass Digital
The Qatar National Chess Team headed to Abu Dhabi to participate in the 28th edition of the Abu Dhabi International Festival with participation from just shy of 1000 male and female chess players from 54 countries.
The Qatari team comprises of Hussein Aziz, Abdullah Al Hamid, Rayyan Erfan, Saad Al Sulaiti as well as Coach Abdulrahim Al Muhio.
The championship, organized by Abu Dhabi Chess Club & Mind Games, is due to run till Aug. 26.
The festival includes 11 tournaments based on competing players' level and age categories, at top of which is the Masters championship with a large number of international players, most notably top-seed Chinese grandmaster Wang Hao, Russian Tomashevsky Evgeny, Predke Alexandr from Russia, the festival's 21st edition title holder Ukrainian Anton Guijarro David, India's Erigaisi Arjun, Egyptian Bassem Amin, US Robson Ray and Van Foreest Jorden from the Netherlands.
The festival's total awards amount to AED 300,000 ($81,677.10).
Within the same context, Qatar's Assistant Secretary of Qatar Chess Federation Ali Abdelrazek Hashem along with players Khalid Al Jamaat and Ibrahim Al Janahy will head Wednesday to Abu Dhabi to partake in the festival's U-16 Blitz Chess tournament.
President of Qatar Chess Federation Mohamed Al Madhahka expressed his strong belief in Qatari chess players to achieve good results in the tournament despite expected challenges against top-seed players.
We look forward through our competitions abroad to achieving positive results; Our objective is to elevate our players' rankings and follow up on their levels for the coming championships, Al Madhahka said in a statement on Tuesday.
"We made a good performance during our latest international appearance in the Olympiad in India's Chennai where the national team won four games out of 11 rounds, he said, concluding that excellent results are expected in the Abu Dhabi festival provided the players possessed the same desire."