Sunday, July 11, 2010

Nam Players Get Stipends

Here's another country that's taking chess seriously. So serious that the government actually provides monthly stipends to chess players. It's Vietnam.

"The [chess] federation pays for everything," Ms. Khiet says. "In my life, I never traveled on my own."

Mr. Thang says Vietnamese chess players improved after the government increased chess salaries and prizes. The stipends were raised from less than $100 to $300 per month over the past two years, while prizes for winning competitions were introduced five years ago and increased three times since, he says. Now, even children under 12 can take home as much as $500 for winning, he says. And in April, the top four male and female winners of Vietnam's national chess tournament took home a total of $13,500 in prizes, ranging from $250 to $4,000.

The Christian Science Monitor has the juice on this.

4 comments:

Janvier Morris said...

With average salary in Vietnam being only a few hundred dollars a month, I looks like the myth of getting paid t play chess having a negative effect is wrong.

Sounds like a great hobby if you end up living in a foreign country. But also a great way to pull people up by the bootstraps.

What other countries do you think this would work in?

Thanks for posting!

chess pro said...

Wow way to go Vietnam, sadly many places like NZ and Aussie are too backwards to do something clever like this

Garvin said...

Chess Pro:

Can you clarify who you mean when you say (sadly many places like NZ and Aussie are too backwards to do something clever like this)?

Are you talking about the national federation, fed governments or something else entirely?

simon said...

In a third world country like Vietnam this kind of money is easy to sustain for a federal government.
It's not like Vietnam is good at Olympic sports which cost millions to compete at. As for aussies players getting stipends from the federal government for chess..dream on. It will NEVER ever happen.