NMSG might be delayed till December

KARACHI: The second edition of the National Mind Sports Games (NMSG), launched with great fanfare last August, will be held later this year.A spokesman of the Mind Sports Association of Pakistan (MSAP), informed ‘The News’ here on Wednesday that it has been decided in principle to have the 2nd NMSG staged during the month of December and a final decision in this regard was to be taken soon.The MSAP, he added, had originally planned holding the 2nd NMSG in August, exactly one year after the inaugural event, but after deliberations it was decided to have it in the last week of December when the student community will be on winter vacations.The Board of Directors of the MSAP, headed by Khurshid Hadi, was instrumental in making the first-ever NMSG a success story. The NMSG carried cash awards of around Rs fifteen lacs that was indeed quite a substantial amount in the context of bridge, chess and scrabble.The inaugural NMSG had gained added significance by the decision of the Pakistan Bridge Federation (PBF) and the Scrabble Association of Pakistan (SAP) to declare their respective contests as the National Championships for the year 2008. The Chess Federation of Pakistan (CFP), having organised the National Chess Championship just a fortnight ago, had classified the chess competition in the NMSG as a national ranking event.