The Island’s chess team has expressed their sympathies after two opponents died within hours of each other at a major international tournament in Europe.

Nick Faulks, a Bermuda delegate who accompanied the squad, told of their shock at the passing of the players during the 41st Chess Olympiad in Norway.

Five players from Bermuda plus delegates attended the event, from August 1-15, which featured nearly 2,000 players from more than 170 countries.

A member of the Seychelles team, Kurt Meier, 67, collapsed and died from a heart attack last Thursday, while an Uzbekistan player, who has yet to be officially identified, was found dead in his hotel room on the same day. The deaths are not being treated as suspicious, organisers have said.

Mr Faulks said the Bermuda team had faced the Seychelles in the tournament — the Island’s Michael Webb played Mr Meier — and that he had competed against him in the past.

“I think all of our people had finished and left the hall by the time of the heart attack,” he said. “People were scrambling back to their hotels with stories of general chaos.

“When the emergency services arrived and the defibrillator was produced someone thought it was a gun and people ran away.”

Mr Faulks described the death of the Uzbekistan player as a “shock” and said he was “quite well known, a genuine grandmaster”.

“It’s one of those nasty things that happen,” he added.

The deaths have raised concerns about the physical and mental stress chess players suffer.

“It can be stressful,” Mr Faulks said. “But I don’t think the gentleman from the Seychelles was 100 percent in any case. He collapsed at the board but the other death is a complete mystery.”

Mr Faulks emphasised that neither death was in any way linked to the Olympiad’s popular Bermuda Party on August 6, after a press report in The Guardian newspaper mentioned the bash in a story about the deaths and said the tournament had a reputation for heavy drinking.

“The party is usually well behaved and this year was very well behaved — beer was $12 a go, it was going to be,” he said. “The party was a week earlier. I can’t remember a case when there’s been anything at the Bermuda party.”