Women’s Chess league likely to start later this month

In order to create more women’s chess players in the country, the Bangladesh Chess Federation (BCF) is going to start the first-ever Women’s Chess League later this month.

“We have plan to start the first ever women’s chess league from July 27 … the sponsor is ready for the league … and if the COVID-19 situation of the country improves at that time, we’ll start the league,” said the BCF general secretary and International Chess Federation zone 2.3 president Syed Shahab Uddin Shamim to BSS.   

He said the league will be held taking the premier league teams and the federation already sent offer letters to twelve teams and among the twelve, eight teams have confirmed their participation.

The BCF general secretary informed that their target is to start the women’s league with twelve premier division’s teams, but if their target is not fulfilled, and if teams of first division want to participate in the women’s league, then the teams would be allowed to participate in the league.

Shamim said in order to grow the interest among the women’s chess players, attractive cash prizes would be given to the first, second and third place finishers.

In addition, all the participating teams of the league would be given a cash prize of Taka 50,000.00 (fifty thousand) as the participation money in order to encourage the players, he added.

Shamim said that through this league, players will get more encouragement towards chess and they would be able to earn some money from this league.

Replying to a question, the BCF general secretary informed that if it’s not possible to organize the women’s league this month due to COVID-19 situation, then it’ll be organized later at a convenient time.

Apart from the Women’s League, the BCF, in the meantime, was scheduled to arrange two more domestic competitions. The National Youth and Cadet Championship was scheduled to start from June 25 last while National Jr. Championship was scheduled to begin from July 5 last. However, the BCF postponed both the national competitions due to the recent surge of COVID-19.

Shamim said sponsors for both the competitions also gave their sponsorship money to the federation and the competition would be arranged as soon as the country’s COVID-19 situation would improve.

BSS