The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Chess As­so­ci­a­tion host­ed the 2023 edi­tion of the In­ter­con­ti­nen­tal Chess Cham­pi­onship for Pris­on­ers on Oc­to­ber 11.

The event, which in­clud­ed the par­tic­i­pa­tion of in­mates, was or­gan­ised by the In­ter­na­tion­al Chess Fed­er­a­tion, FIDE, and the Chica­go Cook Coun­ty Sher­iff’s Of­fice of the USA.

The event boast­ed a to­tal of 118 teams from 50 coun­tries world­wide. T&T made its third ap­pear­ance with five teams: three male teams, one fe­male, and one youth team. There was one ad­di­tion­al team from the pre­vi­ous ap­pear­ance in 2022.

Once again T&T was the on­ly coun­try in the Amer­i­c­as to field teams in all groups, Male, Fe­male, and Youth.

Team T&T’s male team fought hard as they each com­pet­ed in sep­a­rate groups of 7-9 rounds of play with one of the teams com­pet­ing from the Port-of-Spain site fin­ish­ing in sixth place which in­clud­ed wins against Turks and Caicos and Ecuador.

The oth­er team from the YTC site al­so end­ed in sixth po­si­tion but with two wins against St Lu­cia and Paraguay and two draws against USA-Kansas and Colom­bia. The third team at the Port-of-Spain site end­ed in sev­enth place with a win against Uruguay and two draws against USA-Kansas two and Colom­bia two.

The T&T team from the Women’s Prison just missed qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the Cham­pi­onship round as they placed fourth, with wins against USA-Kansas and Mex­i­co.

In on­ly its sec­ond year of par­tic­i­pa­tion, the Youth team from YTC placed third in its group and ad­vanced to the Cham­pi­onship round which con­sist­ed of two groups of four teams which took place on Oc­to­ber 12. Af­ter this round, they placed fourth in the sec­ond group.

The TTCA pres­i­dent, Son­ja John­son, was heart­ened by the re­sponse and out­come of the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the teams as she re­marked, “Once again, Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to demon­strate lead­er­ship in the re­gion in the use of chess for de­vel­op­ment through the FIDE Chess for Free­dom/Chess In Prison pro­gramme. We have suc­cess­ful­ly com­pet­ed in all tour­na­ment cat­e­gories and con­tin­ue to work on ac­cess to the sport of chess which con­tin­ues to grow na­tion­al­ly.”

She con­tin­ued, “We have now of­fi­cial­ly es­tab­lished chess clubs in six sta­tions across the prison sys­tem, with help from our part­ners, in­clud­ing the Pt Fortin Chess Cen­tre. I al­so ex­tend sin­cere grat­i­tude to Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar, ACP of Pro­grammes and In­dus­try Char­maine John­son, and the oth­er prison of­fi­cers for be­ing sup­port­ive part­ners in the ex­e­cu­tion of our vi­sion for the chess pro­gramme with­in the prison sys­tem”.

Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons (Ag), De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar, who en­dorsed the ini­tia­tive, has ex­pressed his plea­sure with the Prison Ser­vice’s in­volve­ment in the an­nu­al event. He has not­ed that it ex­posed the bril­liance and ca­pa­bil­i­ties of those un­der our charge, and com­pli­ment­ed the ef­forts of all in­volved in the prison chess pro­gramme. He has urged them de­spite the re­sults, to con­tin­ue to strive for suc­cess and ex­cel­lence.

He said, “This type of ef­fort was al­so made pos­si­ble with the help of iGovTT, which en­sured the avail­abil­i­ty of 20 lap­tops, to cater to the in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion in the on­line event. We al­so thank NALIS for al­low­ing the use of three of the li­brary sites at Port-of-Spain, Women’s Prison, and YTC for the event to ac­com­mo­date the in­crease in teams. The TTCA was al­so a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of fund­ing from FIDE, via the Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Com­mis­sion to as­sist with par­tic­i­pa­tion in this event and fu­ture de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes with­in the prison.”