(From left) Lê Thành Trung, vice chairman of the VCF and deputy CEO of HDBank, Berik Balgabaev, director of the FIDE representative office in Russia and advisor to the FIDE President, and Trần Hoài Nam, deputy CEO of HDBank, sign an agreement in the presence of President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc, senior leaders of Việt Nam and Russia and top business execs from the two countries. — Photo courtesy of the bank

MOSCOW — The International Chess Federation will organise international tournaments in Việt Nam for 10 years starting in 2022 together with the Vietnam Chess Federation and HDBank.

The three signed a memorandum of understanding for the purpose in Moscow on Tuesday in the presence of President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc, who is on an official visit to Russia.

FIDE will include the annual HDBank International Chess Tournament held in Việt Nam in its list of official tournaments and help improve its field.

The VCF will organise the tournament, improve the skills of Vietnamese team and players and get players from all over the world.

As part of the tournament, the parties also agreed to organise workshops for referees, coaches, and organisers and chess classes for teenagers and younger children by grandmasters.

They will undertake a programme called ‘Chess in schools’ and organise events in 2022, a year that has been designated by FIDE as The Year of Women in Chess.

Cooperation between the three parties is of great significance in improving the skills of Vietnamese players, referees and organisers to help chess in the country grow stronger and become more professional.

Nguyễn Thị Phương Thảo, permanent vice chairwoman of HDBank, said: “Chess, with its special language of intelligence, has been a bridge to help people get closer together and blur borders between countries, religions, languages, and cultures.

“That is why HDBank has chosen to embrace it for nearly a decade as part of our sustainable development programme.”

With the signing of the memorandum of understanding, HDBank will continue to foster chess and collaborate with the VCF as it has done for more than a decade since 2011.

The HDBank International Chess Tournament is held in March every year since 2011 and has become a unique sporting event. The tournament has twice welcomed the FIDE President: Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in 2018 and Arkady Dvorkovich in 2019.

In 2020 and 2021 the tournament was not held due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Over its nine years the HDBank International Chess Tournament attracted players from 42 countries and five continents.

Their numbers kept increasing every year as did the field and organisation.

With an average elo rating of 2370 - 2400, experts consider the HDBank International Chess Tournament the most elite in Asia.

It has given wings to talent such as Grandmaster Lê Quang Liêm, a world top 20 player who won the World Blitz Chess Championship, and Grandmaster Nguyễn Ngọc Trường Sơn who brought glory to Việt Nam at the Asian Chess Championship and Chess Olympiad.

Trần Tuấn Minh,  Lê Tuấn Minh and many young foreign players have won grandmaster norms at this tournament.

Việt Nam’s best performance in the international arena so far has been placing 10th overall and winning the board 2 gold medal at the 2018 Chess Olympiad.

Through the organisation of a top chess tournament, which attracts some of the world’s best, Vietnamese players get opportunities to interact with players from all over the world.

The tournament also helps spread the image of a beautiful, peaceful, developed, and intellectual country to the world and bring the world to Việt Nam.

The International Chess Federation is the world governing body and regulates all international competitions. VNS