A whole new and huge event starts today, and chess is involved: the World Mind Sports Games. After the Summer Olympics athletes and the Paralympics sportsmen now approximately 3,000 Bridge, Chess, Go, Draughts, and Xiangqi players from over 150 countries have travelled to Beijing.

The first World Mind Sports Games is held in Beijing, China from October 3 to 18, 2008. Twenty five to thirty gold medals will be vied for by more than 3000 competitors from over 150 countries. There will be five mind sports competitions: Bridge, Chess, Go, Draughts, and Xiangqi (Chinese Chess).

The Games will be under the aegis of the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) and organized by the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA) of which FIDE is a founding member. Venues are the China National Convention Center and the Beijing International Convention Center.

For chess there are the following sections: Men's Individual Blitz, Women's Individual Blitz, Men's Individual Rapid, Women's Individual Rapid, Mixed Pairs Blitz, Mixed Pairs Rapid, Men's Teams Blitz, Women's Teams Blitz, Men's Teams Rapid and Women's Teams Rapid.

The rate of play for the ten events:
Blitz Chess: 3 minutes with increment of 2 seconds per move. Individual (Men & Women), Pair (Mixed Team), Team (Men & Women)
Rapid Chess: 25 minutes with increment of 5 seconds per move. Individual (Men & Women), Pair (Mixed Team), Team (Men & Women)

Here are the participants lists as published by FIDE on July 21st. They're not definite and certainly not official lists (nothing about participants can be found on the official website!). As Chessdom reported, a Russian sponsor who should have been responsible for part of the air tickets seems to be withdrawing. They also stated that Topalov is not playing.

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Most of the details about entries, rules and regulations of the 1st World Mind Sports Games can be found here at the FIDE website. Below is the schedule of the chess part of the event: