Nearly 500 schoolchildren are participating in the Turkmenistan Chess Championship among boys and girls in the age categories of U7, U9, U11, U13, U15, and U17. The competition is taking place during the winter holidays, from January 5th to 11th, at the Ashgabat Specialized Chess and Checkers School.
\nThese young talents will compete for medals in three chess disciplines: the most prestigious classical chess, rapid chess, and blitz chess. The tournament consists of nine rounds, played according to the Swiss system.
\nThis year, a record number of participants has been recorded \u2013 492 schoolchildren across all 12 age categories (both boys and girls). Thus, 36 sets of medals, or 108 medals in total, will be awarded over the course of this week.
\nThe geography of the participants is very broad:
\n\u2022 Ashgabat \u2014 191 participants
\n\u2022 Lebap region \u2014 109
\n\u2022 Kusht Alemi Academy (Ashgabat, Mary, and Arkadag) \u2014 82
\n\u2022 Mary region \u2014 61
\n\u2022 Dashoguz region \u2014 38
\n\u2022 Ahal region \u2014 9
\n\u2022 Balkan region \u2014 2
\nAfter four rounds, some groups have already established clear leaders. The most uncompromising battle is unfolding in the boys’ U11 category, where 89 players are participating. The tournament has already produced a number of surprises \u2013 new names, especially from the Lebap and Dashoguz Velayats, are defeating established favorites. The winners of the classic stage will be determined on Friday, January 9.
\nSchoolchildren’s championships in odd age categories in Turkmenistan began being held in 2023, in addition to the traditional championships in even age categories (under 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 years old). The goal is to determine the winners for participation in international tournaments in accordance with the calendars of the International and Asian Chess Federations (FIDE and ACF).
\nHowever, their other important goal is to popularize chess among children across the country and motivate them to regularly practice this deeply creative and strategic sport, thereby helping to form the foundation for the country’s intellectual youth.
\nAccording to Vepa Myalikgulyev, Chairman of the Turkmenistan Chess Federation, “in an era when gadgets and social media ‘capture’ the attention and minds of children, chess develops concentration, patience, character, and social skills.” Chess also develops young people who are able to think creatively, strategically, and algorithmically, anticipating the consequences of current actions, tracking, and even managing logical relationships between stages and events. Scientists believe that specialists with this “engineering” mindset will be increasingly in demand in the labor market in the era of artificial intelligence.
\nThe number of youth tournaments in the country has grown in recent years from 12 to 79 per year. The total number of tournaments per year exceeds 100. The number of chess players regularly participating in professional national competitions has increased from 60 to 1,500 over the past four years.
\nCompanies such as D\u00fcwmejik, Ynamdar.com, TelefonTM, Dap.tm, and Orient have stepped up to motivate young participants at this year’s championship, offering prizes and other support to the organizers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nearly 500 schoolchildren are participating in the Turkmenistan Chess Championship among boys and girls in the age categories of U7, U9, U11, U13, U15, and U17. The competition is taking place during the winter holidays, from January 5th to 11th, at the Ashgabat Specialized Chess and Checkers School. These young talents will compete for medals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10909],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156293"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156296,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156293\/revisions\/156296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/156200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}