Oman players gear up for Asian Amateur chess in Muscat

Muscat, Sept 19

With less than 10 days to go, the national chess squad is under an intensive training preparatory programme ahead of 2021-22 Asian Amateur Chess Championship which will run in Muscat during September 29 until October 6 at the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex in Bausher.

Twenty players from national chess team began their final preparation in Al Amal club under watchful eyes of the Yemeni head coach Basheer al Qudaimi. The training camp will end on September 27.

“The training sessions are open for all the team members including junior, senior and women categories in the evening session. Each session will last for a period of four hours daily. The goal of the training programme is to enhance the technical performance of the players. Also, to assist them in developing critical thinking capacity and solve the common mistakes which may occur in the games,” the head coach said.

The camp witnessed training the players on different techniques and strategies. The head coach focused in the previous session on providing a detailed analysis on the player’s performance during their participation in the regional and international events.

“Our objective in this camp is to train the players on long games which are played in an international events. This step will help the players to upgrade their technical level and to be adapted with international level practices,” the Yemeni coach concluded.

As many as 186 players from 21 countries confirmed their attendance in the Asian Amateur tournament which is under organisation of Oman Chess Committee (OCC) in corporation with the Asian Chess Federation.

The participating players are from Bahrain, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Palestine, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and the hosts Sultanate of Oman.

In the men’s section, top three ranked players are Kyrgyzstan’s Asan Kushof, Lebanon’s Mahmoud Maasrani and Pakistan’s Junaid Sohail. In the women’s category, UAE’s Rawda al Sarkal, Palestine’s Iman Swan and Salma al Khelaifi from Qatar are in the top three respectively.