In 2025, the Freedom Asian Chess Initiatives (FACI) project, which supports chess federations in Asian countries where chess is still underdeveloped, will expand from five participating countries to eight.
Since 2024, the Kazakhstan Chess Federation (KazChess/KCF), with financial support from Freedom Holding Corp. and in partnership with FIDE and the Asian Chess Federation (ACF), has been implementing the Freedom Asian Chess Initiatives (FACI) program. This initiative provides assistance to chess federations in Asian countries where chess is not yet sufficiently developed. The first beneficiary countries were Cambodia, Nepal, Oman, Tajikistan, and Sri Lanka.
Starting in April 2024, Kazakhstani coaches have been conducting training sessions in these countries:
- Kirill Kuderinov – Sri Lanka
- Dmitry Stativkin – Oman
- Murtas Kazhgaleyev – Nepal
- Evgeniy Vladimirov – Tajikistan
- Bakhtiyar Askarov – Cambodia
The program includes training sessions for youth and adult national teams, as well as educational seminars for local coaches. After the in-person sessions, training continues online.
Overall, the program structure ensures that each coach spends approximately one month on-site, followed by eight weeks of online training, and then one final month in the country, making it a four-month intensive training cycle.
Given the positive feedback from all five federations, a working group consisting of Victor Bologan (FIDE), Hisham Al-Taher (ACF), Darmen Sadvakasov, and Gulmira Dauletova (KazChess/KCF) reviewed applications for FACI 2025 in February. They decided to expand the program to include three more countries, bringing the total to eight (listed alphabetically):
Bhutan, Jordan, Cambodia, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Sri Lanka.
At the 45th Chess Olympiad 2024 in Budapest, the three newly added countries achieved the following results:
- The men’s teams of Pakistan, Jordan, and Bhutan ranked 97th, 130th, and 141st out of 188 teams, respectively.
- The women’s teams of Jordan and Pakistan finished 92nd and 122nd out of 169 teams.
- Bhutan did not compete in the women’s tournament.
The list of coaches for each of the eight countries will be finalized soon. Additionally, the FACI official website has been launched, where key updates and news about the project will be regularly published.