Four thousand participants attend 36th annual chess and games festival in Pardubice
The 36th annual Czech Open Chess and Games Festival is well underway and will run until August 3. Around four thousand players from almost all over the world will compete there. In addition to chess, registered competitors will also take part in checkers, Scrabble, Rubik's Cube solving, and more.
The 36th edition of the Czech Open International Chess and Games Festival, which is taking place from July 17 to August 3 at Ideon, has approximately 4,000 registered attendees.
Director of the Czech Open International Chess and Games Festival in Pardubice, Jan Mazuch, with more on what makes this year unique:
"We expect this year's Pardubice Open Grandmaster Tournament to reach at least partial pre-COVID levels. While there will be fewer players from the former Soviet Union, strong competitors will include players from Slovakia, Anton Korobov from Ukraine, a two-time winner, and Sipan, also a two-time winner. So the overall level should rise. Additionally, there will be record participation in the team tournament, which serves as the Czech Republic Open Championship, with over 170 participants expected to compete."
At the Czech Open, people will also compete in checkers, bridge, tic-tac-toe, sudoku, scrabble, Rubik's cube solving, pub quizzes, etc. And they will come from almost all over the world. Festival deputy director Petr Laušman about the event:
"As far as countries are concerned, players will be coming from all continents except Australia. The largest contingent will, of course, be Czech players, followed by participants from neighboring countries such as Germany, Poland, and Slovakia. There will also be players from more distant or less typical chess destinations, including South Korea, Israel, the United States, Cuba, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, China, South Africa, and Egypt. So there will be a truly wide range of international representation."
All age categories
Participants will include children and seniors. According to deputy director Laušman, neither age nor gender plays a role in chess:
"If we look at the largest age gap, the youngest participant was born in 2019, which makes him a six-year-old boy, while the oldest participant will be nearly 90 years old; I believe he's 88. That means there's an age difference of over 80 years between the youngest and oldest players. One great aspect of the tournament is that we don't need to separate players by gender. Everyone competes together, since chess isn't physically demanding like athletics, where it's difficult for women to compete directly with men. That said, it's true that men outnumber women; roughly 80% of the participants are men, and 20% are women," concludes Laušman.
