USA Participating in FIDE Candidates Countries Youth Online Chess Tournament, April 18-19

On April 18 and 19, USA will be one of six teams competing in the “Go World! Be Chess Smart against COVID-19!” FIDE Candidates Countries Youth Online Chess Tournament. Each team is comprised of five Under-16 players, three boys and two girls, and each team will play matches against the others in a round robin format. The time control for all games is 10 minutes +2 seconds per move and all games will be played on Chess.com. The USA team consists of IM Andrew Hong, IM Christopher Yoo, FM Robert Shlyakhtenko, WFM Martha Samadashvili and WIM Rochelle Wu. Based on standard FIDE ratings the team is seeded #3 out of the 6 teams, the other teams being a FIDE-representative team, Russia, China, France and Netherlands. The FIDE team looks quite stacked with GMs Niral Sahin, Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Vincent Keymer on their team, which happen to be the only GMs in the event!

Here is the full schedule (updated Saturday, April 18 as rounds 2 and 3 moved to Sunday) of matches, with the team on the left having white on board 1 and then alternating colors down through the match: Round 1 - Saturday, April 18, 10am Eastern/7am Pacific Russia vs. USA China vs. FIDE France vs. Netherlands Round 2 - Sunday, April 19, 10am Eastern/7am Pacific USA vs. France FIDE vs. Netherlands China vs. Russia Round 3 - Sunday, April 19, starts 5 minutes after end of round 2 Netherlands vs. USA Russia vs. FIDE France vs. China Round 4 - Sunday, April 19, starts 5 minutes after end of round 3 FIDE vs. USA China vs. Netherlands Russia vs. France Round 5 - Sunday, April 19, starts 5 minutes after end of round 4 USA vs. China France vs. FIDE Netherlands vs. Russia The pairings, results and standings will be able to be viewed at http://chess-results.com/tnr526478.aspx?lan=1 during the event. Our FIDE Events Manager, Chris Bird, will be broadcasting live coverage of the event via the US Chess Twitch channel at www.twitch.tv/uschess. Coverage will start at 9:45am Eastern/6:45am Pacific on both days. The tournament is organized by International Chess Federation, Chess.com, Mass Sport Division of General Administration of Sport of China, Board and Card Games Administrative Center of General Administration of Sport of China, and Henan Sports Bureau; co-organized by Chinese Chess Association, Henan Provincial Social Sports Center; hosted by Zhengzhou Baiguoshu Chess Club and Chengdu “Chao Yue” Chess Club.