I was so happy to be selected for the
Asian chess tournament for the visually challenge 2017. The tournament was an
individual tournament and 3 players were selected for the tournament from Sri
Lanka.
This was the first time I represented
my country in an international sports event. The tournament was very tuff.
Indian players dominated the tournament, winning the top 5 places. I placed 20th
in the tournament by getting 2 points out of 8 rounds, while my other team
members got 1 point each. I had some good wins against higher rated visually
challenged players via Skype real time tournaments before we went to India for
the Asian Chess tournament, but when it comes to real tournament games the
atmosphere is totally different. We last played our national tournament in
2014, since then we didn’t have any tournaments organized for the visually
challenged players in Sri Lanka. This was a great experience for me.
During the tournament we had 2
workshops in the topic of “How to develop Chess in Asia for the visually
challenge”. And I learned a lot from the
case study presented by Mr. Charu Daththa how they developed Chess in India for
the visually challenged. What I felt was we are in a similar situation where
India was in 1998. No one has taken the responsibility to develop Chess in Sri
Lanka for the visually challenged. This is
a good time for all Chess lovers in Sri Lanka to get together and develop Chess
for the visually challenge in Sri Lanka.
