CSC Wins FIDE Excellence Award

For the past two weeks most of the world’s chess elite have been gathered in Samarkand for the 46th Chess Olympiad, a huge tournament featuring teams from 204 countries and nearly 2,000 players from every corner of the globe. On the chessboard, the host country, Uzbekistan, is again demonstrating the incredible strength of its young stars with both of its teams vying for first place in the Open section. Meanwhile, England’s own young star, Bodhana Sivanandan, looks set to break yet another record by becoming the youngest Woman Grandmaster in the history of the game, aged just 11. Bodhana is a regular at CSC’s ChessFest events and it’s fantastic to see her doing so well.

Meanwhile, off the chessboard, the governing body of world chess, FIDE, last night held an award ceremony to celebrate excellence in chess over the past two years. There were eleven awards up for grabs including one for Best Chess Initiative which was won by CSC! Our CEO, Malcolm Pein was on hand to receive the award. We are delighted that our programme and the hard work of all our tutors and volunteers has been recognised globally in this way - a huge thank you to all of them. We look forward to seeing the trophy when it returns to our offices in London next week!