World Chess Championship for Prisoners

This month's post in the series on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016) offers a few surprises:-

• 1st surprise: There is an 'Intercontinental Online Chess Championship for Prisoners'.
• 2nd surprise: The tournament is sponsored by FIDE.
• 3rd surprise: The most recent tournament was the third such event.

4th surprise: The event was broadcast online. Here is the video covering the final round.

3rd FIDE Intercontinental Online Chess Championship for Prisoners - Final (2:15:47) • 'Streamed live on Oct 13, 2023'

The description explains,

The 3rd Intercontinental Online Chess Championship for Prisoners will be broadcast on the FIDE Youtube channel with live commentary by WGM Almira Skripchenko, IM Michael Rahal, and WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili. They will be joined by special guests – FIDE officials, government officers, members of the penitentiary administration and policymakers, who will share the best practices of introducing chess to inmates, as well as former convicts who will be talking about their own experiences and the positive impact of the game on prisoners.

At 12:40 into the video, we learn that the event is 'Running on Chess.com'. The responsible FIDE site is Chess For Freedom Project (chessforfreedom.fide.com), where there are videos for previous rounds. Under 'News' we learn:-

• 2023-10-13: Mongolia and India win Intercontinental Championship for Prisoners (ditto) • 'Teams of India and Mongolia became the champions of the third Intercontinental Online Chess Championship for Prisoners, the event organized by FIDE and the Cook County (Chicago, IL, USA) Sheriff’s Office, after winning the final matches in youth and women’s sections of the biggest-ever chess event among correctional facilities.

Unlike most tournament reports, the men's event received only second billing in the article:-

The team of Pune prison (India) clinched the title in the men’s tournament of the Intercontinental Online Championship for Prisoners 2023 after beating El Salvador in the final.

You might expect that the games are not the level of quality you normally find for championship events. The commentator and the video broadcaster do a good job of keeping things interesting. Congratulations to the winners and to everyone else who made it happen!