Tuesday 17 November 2015

Sliding towards retirement

Chess is one thing you don't retire from due to age (well, not normally). You might choose to give the game away for other reasons, but just being old is not a barrier to continuing to play. Evidence of this is in the World Seniors Championship currently underway in Italy. The tournament is running in 4 sections and interestingly the 65+ section has attracted more entrants (185) than the Over 50 section (100). The Over 50 events is a little stronger in terms of GM's (10 v 7) but both events show that there is a capacity for seniors chess. The Women's section are substantially smaller (27 for both events) but the odd statistic from these events is that there are more titled players than untitled players in both tournaments.
There is the odd Australian and New Zealand player in these events, and you can check out the results here if your wish (the link is the the 50+ Open, but the other tournaments can be found there as well). As someone who reaches 50 years old next year, I suddenly become eligible to play from Jan 1 and depending on work/finances etc I may add the PNG flag to those hanging over the tournament hall.


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