CAIRO, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- The Egyptian Chess Federation invites Chinese grandmasters to join a new international competition that will be held in February 2018 at the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, the federation chief told Xinhua in an interview in Cairo.
"We will hold the first version of Sharm el-Sheikh international chess competition on Feb. 16-27, 2018, with total rewards up to 30,000 U.S. dollars," said Hesham al-Gendy, president of the federation.
"We would like to invite Chinese chess grandmasters to join the competition and we will cover the flight tickets and accomodation for them," Gendy added.
China is ranked second after Russia in the world chess ranking for countries. It has nine male and 12 female players among the world's top 100 chess players, according to the World Chess Federation rating for November 2017.
China's 23-year-old Hou Yifan is the number one female player worldwide while Ding Liren, 25, is the 11th top male player in the world.
According to the World Chess Federation, Egypt is ranked 47th worldwide and it has one male player, 29-year-old Bassem Amin, rated among the top 100 as 45th worldwide.
"China is a big country in chess and its female national team won the world cup before and the male national team has amazing grandmasters, one of whom, Ding Liren, was qualified to the final match of the World Chess Cup last month in Georgia," said Gendy.
