We welcome all participants of European School Championship 2011! |
European School Championship 2011 is about to start in Kemer (Antalya), Turkey. The opening ceremony will be at 4 p.m. and the first round will start at 4.30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 12, 2011. School Championship follows another international event - World Amateur Chess Championship – which was organized by the TCF and recently ended. It's not an accident that European School Championship takes place in Turkey, in the country which adopted the chess in schools program and has been successfully running it for few years. After the start of the program "Chess in schools" in Turkey, thousands of young chess players appeared in the country. Statistic of the Turkish Chess Federation shows that the number of children learning chess from 2005 till 2010 increased to 2.250.000 (two million, two hundred fifty thousand). The President of Turkish Chess Federation, FIDE Vice-President Ali Nihat Yazici is also a Chairman of the Chess in Schools (CIS) FIDE Commission. In 2010 Turkey hosted Sixth World School Championship in Kayseri. 355 players plus 500 accompanying delegates from 70 different countries convened in the central Anatolian city to participate in that event, which was being staged under the aegis of the Turkish First Lady, Hayrünnisa Gül.
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