Over the past three years, Cyprus has become one of Europe’s chess hubs

By Bulat Latypov

In 2023, Freedom24 – one of the island’s largest financial companies – became the main partner of the Cyprus Chess Federation. Prior to 2023, Cyprus had not played a leading role in world chess.

In the space of three years, it has become one of Europe’s chess hubs.

With the support of Freedom24, 26 competitions were held in Cyprus. The most significant of these were the stages of the Women’s World Grand Prix (2023 and 2025) in Nicosia and the Candidates Tournament at the Cap St Georges Hotel & Resort, with a prize fund of €1 million. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before in the history of chess in Cyprus.

The Candidates’ Tournament is a crucial stage on the path to the world championship matches. The people of Cyprus witnessed the world’s best chess players competing first-hand. For children and teenagers, it was an opportunity to meet legends who had never before gathered here in such a line-up.

On March 1, 2025, the Freedom24 Chess Academy opened in Limassol. According to its director, International Master Artem Sadovsky, the academy’s mission is to develop strong players worthy of representing Cyprus. In less than a year, his protégée Olga Mikhailina raised her rating from 1736 to 2250.

For Freedom24, chess is more than just a game. It develops strategic thinking, resilience and respect – values that we strive to embody in our work every day. In chess, as in business, success often depends on the will to win and the ability to think several moves ahead.

‘Thanks to Freedom’s support, around 2000 people on the island are now actively playing chess, the majority of whom are children’, stated Criton Tornaritis, President of the Cyprus Chess Federation, noting that the national team is growing stronger thanks to these young talents.

On 5 August, the FIDE website published the team line-ups for the countries taking part in the Chess Olympiad, which will take place from September 15 to 27 in Samarkand. The Cyprus men’s team is seeded 77th out of 208. This is a success – never before has the team been ranked in the top half of the Olympiad’s participants.

The team comprises: Andreas Kelires, Cyprus’s first and so far only grandmaster; 18-year-old national champion Rafail Antoniou; seven-time Cypriot champion Konstantinos Michaelides, the 2025 Cypriot champion Alexandros Isaakidis, and the 13-year-old prodigy Savvas Konstantinides.

The women’s national team’s world ranking – 125th out of 192 – is more modest, but its potential is enormous. In 2026, 12-year-old Aida Păunescu was crowned national champion. Alongside her, the team includes the 2023 Cyprus champion Victoria Sokolova and her mother Larisa, the 2025 champion Eleni Pica, and the 2026 runner-up Aikaterina Sarkisian.

The Samarkand Olympiad will also see the election of a new president of the International Chess Federation. One of the three candidates for this post is Timur Turlov, founder and CEO of Freedom Holding Corp., who is also the head of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation.

Timur says that in recent years, chess has become a true passion for him and a personal project to which he has devoted a great deal of time and resources. Having invested around $75 million in chess, Turlov plans to replicate Kazakhstan’s successful experience on a global scale.

One of the key elements of his programme is a unified digital ecosystem bringing together players, national federations, databases and educational content. According to Timur, chess is played by talented and successful people. His aim is to create an inspiring environment for nurturing new champions.

Bulat Latypov is the Chief Communications Officer at Freedom24