This is impressive

2012 TRADEWISE GIBRALTAR CHESS FESTIVAL

Monday 23 January – Thursday 2 February 2012

PRESS RELEASE – 25 January 2012

‘This is impressive’
says Gibraltar’s Mayor Julio Alcantara

Mayor Julio Alcantara paid a visit to the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival yesterday at the start of the Masters competition. Organiser Brian Callaghan, tournament director Stuart Conquest and arbiter Laurent Freyd, showed him round the main hall where the 256 players were already making their moves in the second round of the competition. As he left the hall having paused for a moment to see GM Michael Adams, GM Victor Korchnoi, the number one board with Peter Svidler and Artur Jussuupow, World Champion Hou Yifan, he remarked, “this is impressive.”

Mr Alcantara who also took a few minutes in the broadcast suite to catch up with the analysis of the games by presenter Simon Williams, commented how “the sheer numbers, the spread of countries and the overall set up at the Caleta Hotel is indeed impressive”.

“When something like this works well, and this obviously does, we all tend to forget the hard effort behind an organisation such as this,” he emphasised.

Happy with what he had witnessed, he added, it was great to see that Gibraltar was “out there” putting its mark on the world of chess all over the world in a very positive way.

A chess player himself he admitted he did not play any more but had followed the Daily Telegraph chess column. He also recalled how as a former teacher of the secondary school in Gibraltar, Bayside Comprehensive, he had organised a chess club for his pupils as far back as 1972 (incidentally, the year that Boris Spassky played Bobby Fischer for the World Championship in Reykjavik). Remembering their surnames, he said, today they were doing very well in their chosen professions.

Please do not hesitate to contact me at gibchesspress@gmail.com

Alice Mascarenhas
Tradewise Chess Press Officer
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Press Office
2012 Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival
www.gibraltarchesscongress.com