At the end of Day 3 of the FIDE Chessable Camp @ EXPO 2020 Dubai, the participants had an opportunity to attend the fifth game of the FIDE World Chess Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi.

The lucky 12 youngsters were selected from 250 players aged from 8 to 16 nominated by 100 federations, who have been undergoing training for two hours every week since July.

From Asia, there are six, with four from India: Gukesh D and Leon Luke Mendonca, the wild cards, and Divya Jitendra Desmuth and Sahiti Varshini Moogi. Others are Poh Yu Tian from Malaysia and Abdulrahman Mohamad Al Taher nominated by the host country UAE.

There are four representatives of Europe: Enrico Follesa from Belgium, Ayan Allaverdiyevam from Azerbaijan, Magnus Ermitsch from Germany, and Adrian Stenier Soderstrom from Sweden

The Americas is represented by Ilan Schnaider and Caldela Belen Francisco Guecamburu, both from Argentina.

Day 1 started with a room full of guests who have rarely been seen together in one place before: FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich, Deputy President Bachar Kouatly, Managing Director Dana Reizniece-Ozola, and Chessable CEO Geert van der Velde. It was hard to tell whose words were more inspiring!

It only got better when former World Champion Viswanathan Anand delivered an instructive lecture of the highest quality.

Did a tremendous and quick improvement occur right in this camp, or it can be attributed to the five months of weekly lessons two hours a week in English, Spanish and Russian before? Whatever the reason, the ten youngsters who took on TRG Chairman and Russia National Junior Coach Mikhail Kobalia in clock simul were on fire, scoring five wins, three draws and suffering only two losses!

Day 2 was a treat of another kind for the young participants as, together with their parents,  they had a chance to experience EXPO.

Day 3 saw Chessable CEO Geert van der Velde lead a round table discussion where life lessons took the centre stage together with the development of industry-leading training platform Chessable with Chessable Classroom.

What’s ahead?

Day 4 will be a day of intense training at the actual match venue with Mikhail Kobalia and Viswanathan Anand, a behind the scenes visit that Dana Reizniece-Ozola will wrap up. The FIDE Managing Director will talk about her career path from being a chess player to becoming an award-winning Minister of Finance and still having enough skills to beat the world No 1 Hou Yifan when Latvia met China at the 2016 Olympiad in Baku.

On Day 5, the young participants will have some precious time with the FIDE World Cup 2021 winner Jan-Krzysztof Duda sharing his valuable experience with them.