Dubai: The Dubai Chess and Culture Club announced that 13 Emiratis have recently passed the chess trainer’s examination and are set to be confirmed as international chess instructors during the 42nd World Chess Olympiad in September in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Fide Master (FM) Saeed Ishaq and Woman International Master (WIM) Amna Nouman, both members of the UAE national team, along with the UAE’s top junior player International Master (IM) Ebrahim Sultan, lead the cast of new UAE chess instructors after completing a rigorous three-day seminar and passing the trainer’s examination held at the Dubai Chess and Culture Club.
“A crucial element in our efforts to promote chess in the grassroots and nurture new talents is the development of qualified trainers and instructors,” said Najib Saleh, the club’s Technical Director. “With the new batch of Fide-certified instructors, which include key players such as Saeed Ishaq, Amna Nouman and Ibrahim Sultan, we are strengthening the ranks of Emirati chess coaches and instructors and are looking forward to providing more quality training and chess instruction to our students.”
Based on their performance during the seminar and scores in the exam, the participants were awarded any of four titles: Fide Trainer (FT), Fide Instructor (FI), National Instructor (NI) and Developmental Instructor (DI). The titles will be confirmed by the presidential board of the International Chess Federation, also known by its French acronym Fide, during the Olympiad, a biennial global competition where the UAE Men's and Women's national teams will also be competing against more than a hundred countries for one of the most coveted championships in the sport.
The trainer’s seminar was conducted on July 11-13 by prolific Greek author Grandmaster (GM) Efstratios Grivas, who is also a Fide Senior Trainer (FST) and Secretary of the Fide Trainers’ Commission. There were 24 participants in the seminar.
Ishaq and Nouman were awarded the FI title, while Sultan was awarded the NI title along with Woman Fide Masters (WFM) Amal Abdulaziz and Eman Abdulaziz, Woman Candidate Master (WCM) Jamila Ahli Juma, Fatima Abdulghani, Ali Abdulla, Abdulaziz Ali, AH Almarazeeq Esa and Haifa Sultan. Obtaining the DI title were Saleh Abdulaziz and Jasim Nour Saleh.
GM Davorin Kuljasevic of Croatia and IM Iva Videnova of Bulgaria, both members of the club’s coaching staff, also took part in the seminar and were awarded the FT title.
Eight members of the Filipino Chess Players League UAE also passed the exams. Rocky Pabalan, Ernesto Yap and Jobannie Tabada were awarded the FI title, while Gary Flores and Danilo Reyes were awarded the NI title. Alexies Byron Dysangco, Bennyl Ramos and Ronaldo Santos were awarded the DI title. Egyptian Mohammad Ahmad Shafik Badawi received the NI title to complete the list of new instructors.
