More than 400 students will participate Weekend 27-29/4 to the Panhellenic chess matches which will take place in Larissa. The Hellenic Chess Federation co-organizes the 35th Panhellenic individual chess championship for schoolboys and the 21st Panhellenic team championship, together with the Regional Unit of Larissa under the auspices of the Region of Thessaly and with the support of the Municipality of Larissa, as well as the chess club of the city and the Local Committee of Chess Associations of Thessaly.
Children and teenagers of all ages – from kindergarten to high school – from both public and private schools can participate. In the team championship, which will be divided into three groups – elementary school, middle school, high school – the teams will have four members, while in the individual championships, the competitors will be divided into 11 groups based on the class they are in in the current school year, starting from the toddlers. According to Christos Pilalis, her school chess administrator Hellenic Chess Federation, the participants will compete with a Swiss system of 9 rounds in the individual championship and 7 in the team. “In many schools in Greece, systematic and massive work is done on chess – either with the new Skills Workshop programs created by the Federation and approved last year by the Institute of Educational Policy, or with programs of the parents’ and guardians’ associations,” emphasizes Mr. Pilalis. The result, he adds, is that the number of children involved in chess, and the number of schools that cultivate it, is constantly growing. The director of the games is Dimitris Kefalas, who also organized the Panhellenic student championships that took place last year and the year before at the Peace and Friendship Stadium.
