PRESS RELEASE
THE 2012 WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIPS IS THE LARGEST DEAF SPORTING EVENT OF THE YEAR
This year’s biggest sporting event among the deaf and hard of hearing people in the world will open up this coming September 28th..
The city of Almaty, Kazakhstan, will be hosting the 15th ICSC World Individual Championships in Chess, in which a record number of 175 chess players from 29 countries are expected to take part in the event.
In comparison, in the year of 2012, for instance, the ICSD-sponsored events – the World Athletics Championships held in Toronto, Canada, attracted representatives from 27 countries, while the World Football Championship ( Izmir, Turkey ) and World Table Tennis Championship ( Tokyo, Japan ) had competitors coming from just 16 and 15 countries, respectively.

The acronyms of ICSC and ICSD stand for International Committee of Silent Chess and International Committee of Sport for the Deaf, respectively.

According to the Organizing Committee of the 15th World Individual Championships, 144 chess players have registered for the following individual contest categories
Men: 30 participants from 25 countries
Women: 16 participants from 12 countries
Boys: 8 participants from 7 countries
Girls: 7 participants from 6 countries
Deaf-Blind: 11 participants from 8 countries
Men’s Seniors: 24 participants from 11 countries
Women’s Seniors: 8 participants from 5 countries
Open Tournament: 40 participants from 11 countries.
In addition, a separate event – the World Blitz Championships for both Men and Women – will also take part at Almaty.The exact number of entries in these 2 separate categories will be released several hours before the start of the event on Sunday, September, 30th, 2012.

The last 14th World Individual Championships were held in 2008 at St. Gallen, Switzerland. The current reigning World Champions in different categories are:

Veselin Georgiev of Bulgaria ( Men )
Tatiana Baklanova of Ukraine ( Women )
Sirojiddin Zaynidinov of Uzbekistan ( Boys )
Annegret Mucha of Germany ( Girls )
Alexander Sleptsov of Azerbaijan ( Deaf-Blind )
Sergey Salov of Germany ( Men’s Blitz )
Yulia Botalova of Russia ( Women’s Blitz )
Krzysztof Checiak of Poland ( Open ).

Another major event – the 31st ICSC Congress session – will take place at Almaty on Monday, October 1, 2012. Among the many issues to be dicisssed and voted upon at the Congress floor will be a Motion to Rename the organization of the ICSC to the DCI ( or, The Deaf Chess International ).

For additional information of the Championships in Almaty, please visit this website
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Susan Polgar September 21, 2012 Daily News, Major Tournaments 3 Comments
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