After several months of planning, the much anticipated Lagos Millionaire Satellite Chess Festival gets underway with all the best players in the country and sub region set to storm the Chevron event centre, Gbagada, Lagos.
For five days, Nigerian chess prodigies led by current National Champion, Bomo Kighiga, John Fawole, Bunmi Olape, Dapo Adu and Eugene Uwana all set to display their prowess on the chess board to determine the ultimate winner of the all- expense paid trip main tournament in Las Vegas USA in October 2015.
The second prize winner will take home N100, 000 while N70, 000, N40, 000 are also for grab for other players in same order. There are cash prizes for best female players and in the Open section.
According to the President of Nigeria Chess Federation (NCF), Mr. Lekan Adeyemi, Millionaire Chess is a company that promotes chess and organises global chess tournaments. The organisation conducted the first Millionaire Chess Open tournament which was held in Las Vegas, USA last year.
With a total of $1,000,000 in prizes, it is the highest-stakes open chess tournament in history. The second edition of the Millionaire Chess is scheduled to come up from October 8 to 12, 2015 in Las Vegas, USA.
To provide opportunities for chess players from African Federation, the Kasparov Chess Foundation in partnership with the organisers agreed to provide full sponsorship to the tune of $5000 each to the three winners of the Millionaire Chess Satellite Tournaments in Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya.
The Nigerian version of the tournament will run from June 10 to 15 and NCF has decided to add two other categories to the tournament by giving opportunities to players who will not be able to participate in the main even because of work commitments and also students who will not able to participate from today.
The Opens and U-16 categories will run on Saturday, 13 and Sunday, 14 only and cadet category would be used to select players that will represent Nigeria at the Zone 4.4 U-16 African Team Chess Championship scheduled to come up from July 7 to 15, 2015, at the DPS International, in Ghana.
