IM Hamed Wafa, the Under 20 African Chess Champion, was among 13 rising stars chosen to attend the Chessable Academy in-person training camp in Menorca from March 27 to April 2, 2024.
Before joining the in-person camp, IM Hamed was one of 450 students from over 100 federations who successfully enrolled in the FIDE Chessable Academy’s 3rd-grade program. The FIDE Chessable Academy brings together top players and coaches to teach a specially designed training program for aspiring chess masters.
The training camp featured renowned coaches and chess legends such as Hou Yifan, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Boris Gelfand, Stefanova Antoaneta, Alexander Khalifman, Artur Jussupow, Mikhail Gurevich, Ramesh R B, Vladimir Potkin, Aleksey Dreev, Vladimir Malakhov, Victor Bologan, Igor Lysyj, Evgeniy Najer, Miguel Illescas, Yevgeniy Vladimirov, Surya Ganguly, Sergei Tiviakov, Anton Filippov, Melikset Khachiyan, Thomas Luther, Yannick Gozzoli, Farrukh Amonatov, Alexey Kuzmin, Igor Khenkin, Hicham Hamdouchi, Georgui Castaneda, Dejan Bojkov, Ilaha Kadimova, Robert Hungaski, Reynaldo Vera, Alonso Zapata, and Vishal Sareen.
The program focused on important skills and techniques, including studying chess openings, position evaluation, attack and defense principles, evaluation of the position and the plan, prophylactic thinking, how to play against the pieces, un-evident moves and full board vision, danger of passed pawns, practical rook endings, correct and incorrect attack, “bad” pieces and more.
Thirteen outstanding young talents were selected from the 450 participants to attend the FIDE Chessable In-Person Training Camp, led by GM Judit Polgar and GM Artur Jussupow.
The camp, organized by the FIDE Trainers’ Commission covered essential aspects of chess gameplay and also included sessions on personal growth and social skills, conducted by experts like Dana Reizniece-Ozola, Geert van der Velde, Maria Yuste, and Natalia Ryzhenko, in personal branding, communication rules, and ethics of FIDE.
