Volume : 12 Issue : 7 Price Rs. 25 February 2018

A I C F C H R O N I C L Ethe official magazine of the All India Chess Federation

16th Delhi International Open Grandmasters Chess Tournament, New Delhi

GM Arkadij Naiditsch (Azerbaijan) Winner

10th Chennai Open International Grandmaster Chess Tournament,Chennai

GM R.R.Laxman (India)Winner

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Room No. 70,Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium,Chennai - 600 003.Ph : 044-65144966 /Telefax : 044-25382121E-mail : indianchessfed@gmail.comPublisher: Bharat Singh ChouhanEditor : C.G.S. Narayanan

AICF CHRONICLE February 2018

Price: Monthly Rs.25 Annual Rs.300

16th Delhi International Open Grandmasters Chess Tournament, New Delhi

Arkadij Naiditsch of Azerbaijan is Winnerby IA Vasanth BH, Chief Arbiter

16thDelhi International Grandmaster Open Chess Tournament organized by Delhi Chess Association under

the aegis of All India Chess Federation from 9th January 2018 to 16th January 2018 at Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, New Delhi. The festival consisted of three categories, A, B & C with a total cash prize fund of a breath-taking Rs. 77,77,777/-.A total of 264 players from 24 federations participated in Category A. 783 players from 8 federations in Category B and 1273 players from 9 fed-erations in category C participated.

GM Arkadij Naiditsch of Azerbaijan, rated 2701, was the top seed in Category A fol-lowed by GM FarrukhAmonatov, rated 2636, from Tajikistan. Arjuna Awardee GM Abhijeet Gupta, rated 2610 from India was third seed of the tournament. The premier event had 27 Grand Masters, 24 International Masters, One Women Grandmaster, 5 Women International Master and 16 Fide Masters in the fray.

“This is a historic moment for Indian chess as we welcome the 16th edition of the Delhi GM Open. We started small back in 2003, but now it is already boasting a record prize fund. This tournament has proved to be a boon to every chess player in India. It is our honor to serve Indian chess and Indian chess players,” said Mr. Bharat Singh Chauhan, the President of Delhi Chess Association.

In round two, On the second table, unherald-ed Tamil Nadu youngster A.L. Muthiah rated 2291, managed to hold the second seed GM Amonatov Farrukh, rated 2636 to a draw. It

was a Reti Opening in which Muthiah was applying steady pressure on the queenside with the white pieces. Around the 40th move, the Indian had a chance to keep up the pressure and go to an endgame a pawn up. But with less time on the clock, Muthiah decided to repeat his position and take the draw instead

In third round, IM Rathnakaran K of India drew with top seed GM Arkadij Naiditsch of Azerbaijan. In fourth round 24th seed GM Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh defeated Viet-namese GM Tran Tuan Minh to emerge as the new sole leader.

The eighth round of the 16th Delhi GM Open was destined to be a cracker of a contest. There were two players tied in the lead with 6.5/7. Indian GM KarthikeyanMurali, rated 2580, and the top seed GM ArkadijNaiditsch of Azerbaijan rated 2701. Furthermore, there were 15 players tied just behind them at 5.5/7.

Naiditsch had the white pieces against Karthikeyan and he decided to open with the king’s pawn, to which the Indian replied with the notoriously famous Berlin Defence. The resulting queenless position is a well-known middlegame that is closer to the endgame than most other structures. Naiditsch dis-played supreme strategic understanding to use his minor pieces to dominate over Karthikeyan’s army. Karthikeyan surrendered on the 29th move. Arkadij Naiditsch with 7.5/8 points sealed his victory.

From the Editor’s desk

Grandmaster Vidit Santhosh Gujrathi has done India proud winning Tata Steel Chess Challengers held at Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands last month. The victory ensured that Vidit qualified for Tata Steel Masters 2019 where best chess players

across the world would be taking part. Report on this event is presented in the centre pages of this issue.

On the home front, two prominent GM level Open tournaments in AICF Calendar were organized last month. The 16th edition of Delhi International Open Grandmasters Chess Tournament drew a whopping 2320 entries, all the three categories put together, for a prize fund of Rs.77,77,777. This Open which is growing in stature over the years with phenomenal increase in prize money is all set to touch one crore in the next edition. The premier event attracted 264 players which included 27 Grandmasters. Two GM norms and two IM norms were made during the event. Top seeded GM Arkadij Naiditsch of Azerbaijan won the Open event.

10th Chennai Open International Grandmaster Chess Tournament for Dr. N. Mahalingam Trophy was held in Hotel Vijay Park, Chennai in which 16 GMs from 22 Federations took part. Three norms, two IM norms and one WIM Norm, were made and four players gained more than 100 elo rating points. GM R.R.Laxman from Tamilnadu won the event.

All Odisha Chess Association added one more feather to its cap organizing the 7th National Schools Championship successfully with support of Dr. Achyuta Samanta, founder KIIT group of Institutions, at Bubhaneshwar..

AICF organized a three-day FIDE Arbiter seminar in Chennai under the guidance of TNSCA in which 56 arbiters took part. Reports and photographs of all the above events are presented in this issue. Selected games from Chennai GM Open annotated by IM Manuel Aaron are also presented elsewhere in this issue.

C.G.S.Narayanan

Readers are invited to offer their feedback on the regular features in the AICF Chronicle and are also invited to send interesting articles, annotated games and chess anecdotes to the Editor at ‘www.indianchessfed@gmail.com’ or ‘cgsnarayanan @hotmail.com.

Inside….16th Delhi International Open Grandmasters Tmt, New Delhi Arkadij Naiditsch of Azerbaijan is Winner by IA Vasanth BH, Chief Arbiter 110th Chennai Open International Grandmaster Tmt Laxman wins title by IA Nitin Shenvi ,Chief Arbiter 8Captain All Bengal State Amateur Tmt(Below 2000),KolkataRahul Krishna Viswanathan wins title by Amit Kumar Biswas, Chief Arbiter 13Ganesan Memorial FIDE Rated Open Tmt,Nagercoil Balasubramaniam wins Ganesan Memorial by Winston, Chief Arbiter 15IIFL 3RD Mumbai Open International Grandmaster Tmt, Mumbai Maghsoodloo Parhan of Iran wins by IA S.Paul Arokia Raj 16 KC Sebastian Mem.Fide Rated Tmt(below 1500, Kottayam Debargha Daw wins at Kottayam by IA L.R. Bhuvanaa Sai, Chief Arbiter 18KKCA 2nd All India FIDE Rated Tmt (Below 1600),Coimbatore Kathiravan wins at Coimbatore by IA Ganesh Babu S,Chief Arbiter 193rd master mind open fide rated tmt, Pammal Balasubramanian wins title by R.Srivatsan, Chief Arbiter 2118th North Eastern States FIDE Rating Ch’ship, Shillong Rahul Gurung of Sikkim wins by Debasish Barua IA, Chief Arbiter 22Sri Ram School Intl. FIDE Rating Tmt,Tindivanam Kunal wins the title by S.Balaraman, Chief Arbiter 28Suraj FIDE Rating Tournament, Sangli Pratik Mulay Wins by IA Rajendra Shidore 304thTeekay International FIDE Rated Tmt,Thoothukudi Kunal emerges Champion by IA Prof.R.Anantharam, Chief Arbiter 327th National Schools Ch’ship,Bhubaneshwar Eleven medals to Tamilnadu by N.K.Nandakumar IA,Chief Arbiter 34Selected games from Chennai GM OpenAnnotated by IM Manuel Aaron 36Tactics from master games by S.Krishnan 42 Test your endgame by C.G.S.Narayanan 43Masters of the past-85 Arnold Denker 44AICF Calendar 48

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10th Chennai Open International Grandmaster Tournament, Chennai

Cont.on p.5

Arjuna Awardee and India’s first International Master Manuel Aaron makes the first move against top seed GM Timur Gareyev of USA. Standing left to right are:Nitin Shenvi IA, Chief Arbiter, B.Murugavel, Organizing Secretary and Vice President TNSCA, D.V.Sundar, Vice President FIDE & AICF , Stephen Balasamy, Tournament Director and Secretary, TNSCA and Paul Arokia Raj IA

Top seed GM Arkadij Naiditsch drew in the ninth round with untitled Indian Akash Pc Iyer, rated 2415, to take a step closer to the title. IM Md. Nubairshah Shaikh rated 2380 managed to beat IM P. Karthikeyan rated 2497 to complete his GM norm as well.Naid-itsch offered a draw after 13 moves with the black pieces in a Queen’s Gambit Declined Exchange Variation. This ensured a GM norm for the young Tamil Nadu player.

Top seed GM ArkadijNaiditsch drew in the tenth and final round against Italian GM David Alberto to seal the Delhi GM Open 2018 title.Naiditsch offered a draw after 18 moves with the white pieces in a Caro-Kann Exchange Variation. With 8.5/10, he finished ahead by a half point over the rest of the field.Bangladeshi GM Ziaur Rahman managed to draw with Indian GM KarthikeyanMurali with the black pieces. The game began as a Sicilian Defense where both the players were on their toes, move for move. In the end, the players settled for a draw in a rook endgame. Ziaur finished on 8.0/10 and tied for the second place.

IM Md. Nubairshah Shaikh was black against IM Vignesh NR and the game was a Caro KannDefence. Vignesh played by risking his position and had to pay the price as Nubair-shahfound all the right moves to scoop up two pawns for free. Nubairshahalso finishes with 8.0/10 for a tie of second place but placed third with tie break score.Hungarian GM Adam Horvath finished with four consecutive wins also finish with 8.0/10

In the Category B with 783 players being held simultaneously, SubhraSaha (1727) of West Bengal scored 9/10 and emerged as winner. Madhusoodhan KR (1727) of Kerala, Tirtha Sarkar (1759) of West Bengal, SathyaGiri

V (1842) of Tamilnadu, Deepak Rai (1773) of Delhi and PunitIndora (1905) of Haryana score 8.5/10 and based on tie break score placed 2-6 accordingly.

In the Category C with 1273 players, 5th seed, 14 year old boy, Anirudh Jain (1590) of Delhi score 9.5/10 and emerged winner. Devi Das Suresh Pai (1534) of Karnataka, Ravindra P (1457) of Andra Pradesh, Kesavan G (1426) of Tamilnadu, Top seed, 17 year old, Mohit Kumar Soni (1599) of Bihar and Sanjib Mali (1553) of West Bengal scored 9/10 and based on tie break score placed 2-6 accordingly.

Four normswere made during the GM Open.Two GM norms-Akash PC Iyer, Nubairshah Shaikh and Twi IM norms -Samme Jayakumar Shete and Koustav ChatterjeeFinal ranking Rk Name FED Pts 1 GM Naiditsch Arkadij AZE 8½ 2 GM Rahman Ziaur BAN 8 3 IM Md Nubairshah Shaikh IND 8 4 GM Horvath Adam HUN 8 5 GM Karthikeyan Murali IND 7½ 6 GM Vaibhav Suri IND 7½ 7 GM Tiviakov Sergei NED 7½ 8 GM David Alberto ITA 7½ 9 GM Deepan ChakkravarthyJ IND 7½ 10 GM Tukhaev Adam UKR 7½ 11 GM Deviatkin Andrei RUS 7½ 12 IM Khusenkhojaev Md TJK 7½ 13 IM Harsha Bharathakoti IND 7½ 14 GM Czebe Attila HUN 7½ 15 GM Amonatov Farrukh TJK 7 16 Akash Pc Iyer IND 7 17 GM Pruijssers Roeland NED 7 18 GM Rozum Ivan RUS 7 19 GM Gupta Abhijeet IND 7 20 IM Vignesh N R IND 7 21 FM Erigaisi Arjun IND 7 22 Sankalp Gupta IND 7

Playing Hall in Hotel Vijay Park

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10th Chennai Open International Grandmaster Tournament, ChennaiCont.from p.7

R.R.Vasudevan IA,Nitin Shenvi IA, Chief Arbiter, B.Murugavel, Organizing Secretary and Vice President TNSCA, D.V.Sundar, Vice President FIDE & AICF , Bharat Singh, Chief Guest and Secretary AI CF, Stephen Balasamy, Tournament Director and Secretary,TNSCA,Winner GM R.R.Laxman, Vijayaraghavan MD of Vijay Park and Prof.R.Anantharam IA, Technical Director

23 IM Sardana Rishi AUS 7 24 IM Shyaamnikhil P IND 7 25 GM Nguyen Duc Hoa VIE 7 26 S Jaykumar Shete IND 6½ 27 Koustav Chatterjee IND 6½ 28 GM R Chowdhury Saptarshi IND 6½ 29 GM Sengupta Deep IND 6½ 30 GM Tran Tuan Minh VIE 6½ 31 GM Gareyev Timur USA 6½ 32 IM Rathnakaran K. IND 6½ 33 Muthaiah Al IND 6½ 34 GM Sivuk Vitaly UKR 6½ 35 IM Karthikeyan P. IND 6½ 36 GM Dzhumaev Marat UZB 6½ 37 Sudhanshu Ranjan IND 6½ 38 WGM Gomes Mary Ann IND 6½ 39 IM D Bala Chandra Prasad IND 6½ 40 FM Mitrabha Guha IND 6½ 41 Arjun Kalyan IND 6½ 42 CM Gukesh D IND 6½ 43 Sekar B IND 6½ 44 GM Ghosh Diptayan IND 6½ 45 FM Hafiz Arif Abdul INA 6½ 46 Saurabh Anand IND 6½ 47 GM Atalik Suat TUR 6½ 48 Tiwari Arjun IND 6 49 IM Gusain Himal IND 6 50 IM Nitin S. IND 6 51 IM Sindarov Javokhir UZB 6 52 Nayak Rajesh IND 6 53 Navalgund Niranjan IND 6 54 Manush Shah IND 6 55 WIM Srija Seshadri IND 6 56 IM Ravi Teja S. IND 6 57 Senthil Maran K IND 6 58 IM Kathmale Sameer IND 6 59 Yashas D. IND 6 60 IM Sidhant Mohapatra IND 6 61 IM Hemant Sharma (Del) IND 6 62 IM Abhishek Kelkar IND 6 63 AGM Sa Kannan IND 6 64 Saravana Krishnan P. IND 6 65 Gaikwad Siddhant IND 6 66 WFM Varshini V IND 6

67 IM Sangma Rahul IND 6 68 FM Srinath Rao S.V. IND 6 69 FM Harshal Shahi IND 6 70 Ram S. Krishnan IND 6 71 IM Kandil Adham EGY 6 72 Dodeja Pawan IND 6 73 Panda Sambit IND 6 74 Saptorshi Gupta IND 6 75 Sarvesh Kumar A IND 6 76 Ashutosh Kumar IND 6 77 Satkar Chirag IND 6 78 FM Fadi Marko EGY 6 79 CM Mendonca Leon Luke IND 6 80 Kaustuv Kundu IND 5½ 81 Neelash Saha IND 5½ 82 FM Gajwa Ankit IND 5½ 83 GM Solodovnichenko Yuri UKR 5½ 84 GM Lalith Babu M R IND 5½ 85 CM Aronyak Ghosh IND 5½ 86 Bhambure Shantanu IND 5½ 87 IM R.Balasubramaniam IND 5½ 88 CM Kushagra Mohan IND 5½ 89 Manigandan S S IND 5½ 90 Nguyen Phuoc Tam VIE 5½ 91 Bharat Kumar Reddy P IND 5½ 92 WIM Franco Valencia Angela COL 5½ 93 Kulkarni Chinmay IND 5½ 94 Adarsh Tripathi IND 5½ 95 Ajay Karthikeyan IND 5½ 96 Patil Pratik IND 5½ 97 Aaryan Varshney IND 5½ 98 IM Praveen Kumar C IND 5½ 99 Shailesh Dravid IND 5½ 100 Shelke Sankarsha IND 5½ 101 Badrinath S. IND 5½ 102 Kumar Gaurav IND 5½ 103 Kavinda Akila SRI 5½ 104 Singh Y. Dhanabir IND 5½ 105 Singh Arvinder Preet IND 5½ 106 Soham Kamotra IND 5½ 107 Vatsal Singhania IND 5½ 108 Mohamed Anees M IND 5½ 109 Aan Sikka IND 5½

B.Murugavel, Organizing Secretary and Vice President TNSCA ,Nitin Shenvi IA, Chief Arbiter, D.V.Sundar, Vice President FIDE & AICF , Runner-up GM Rozum Ivan (Russia) Bharat Singh, Chief Guest and Secretary AI CF, Stephen Balasamy, Tournament Director and Secretary,TNSCA, Vijayaraghavan, MD of Vijay Park and Prof.R.Anantharam IA, Technical Director

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110 Anilkumar O.T. IND 5½ 111 Harshit Arya IND 5½ 112 Randil Lakshitha SRI 5½ 113 Dahale Atul IND 5½ 114 FM Rathanvel V S IND 5 115 WIM Pujari Rucha IND 5 116 Lokesh N. IND 5 117 Utsab Chatterjee IND 5 118 Singh S. Vikramjit IND 5 119 Snehal Bhosale IND 5 120 CM Aditya Mittal IND 5 121 Dixit Nikhil IND 5 122 Aradhya Garg IND 5 123 IM Rajesh V A V IND 5 124 Soham Datar IND 5 125 Masango Spencer ZIM 5 126 Pranav Shetty IND 5 127 Saksham Rautela IND 5 128 Baivab Mishra IND 5 129 CM Karthik Kumar Pradeep IND 5 130 FM Hamal Manish NEP 5 131 Pruthu Deshpande IND 5 132 Gavi Siddayya IND 5 133 Pattnayak Nilsu IND 5 134 Bhattacharya N Shekhar IND 5 135 WFM Jishitha D IND 5 136 AGM Siddharth Jagadeesh SGP 5 137 Polakhare Aryan IND 5 138 Barath Kalyan M IND 5 139 Imocha Laishram IND 5 140 FM Raja Rithvik R IND 5 141 FM Phadke Sohan IND 5 142 Jain Nityata IND 5 143 CM Nikhil Magizhnan IND 5 144 Sourath Biswas IND 5 145 Sreejith G.S. IND 5 146 Mehta Naitik R IND 5 147 Joy Pankaj Shah IND 5 148 Ithal H L Rajath IND 5 149 AGM Tarun Kanyamarala IRL 5 150 Shrutarshi Ray IND 4½ 151 Kulkarni Vinayak IND 4½ 152 WIM Pratyusha Bodda IND 4½ 153 Moksh Amit Doshi IND 4½

154 Arnav Tiwari IND 4½ 155 Prakash Ram IND 4½ 156 Pranav Anand IND 4½ 157 Mohite Ranveer IND 4½ 158 Joshi Govind Ballabh IND 4½ 159 Suvradeepta Das IND 4½ 160 WFM Tarini Goyal IND 4½ 161 GM Himanshu Sharma IND 4½ 162 IM Ameir Moheb EGY 4½ 163 Kanishk S K IND 4½ 164 Mahitosh Dey IND 4½ 165 Tamang Thendup IND 4½ 166 Godson Merlin E IND 4½ 167 Lama Surbir NEP 4½ 168 Anant Prabhudesai IND 4½ 169 Yogesh Gautam IND 4½ 170 AIM Trisha Kanyamarala IRL 4½ 171 Nitin Rathore IND 4½ 172 S Sabharishankar IND 4½ 173 Khaire Ketan R. IND 4½ 174 Manish Anto Cristiano F IND 4½ 175 Sannidhanam Anurag AUS 4½ 176 Samdani Sahil Sagar IND 4½ 177 Chandratreya Prachiti IND 4½ 178 FM Shrestha S Prasad NEP 4½ 179 Rindhiya V IND 4½ 180 FM Matta Vinay Kumar IND 4 181 WIM Michelle Catherina P IND 4 182 Deepthamsh Reddy. M IND 4 183 Mari Arul S. IND 4 184 Arya Bhakta IND 4

Category B Final standings: Rk Name Pts 1 Subhra Saha 9 2 Madhusoodanan K.R. 8½ 3 Tirtha Sarkar 8½ 4 Sathya Giri V 8½ 5 Deepak Rai 8½ 6 Punit Indora 8½ 7 Thounaojam G Luwang 8 8 Shubham 8 9 Chittari Abhishek Varma 8 10 Sharma Pankaj 8

11 Panta Sumit 8 12 Vinodh Kumar B. 8 13 Sandip Dey 8 14 Raju O A 8 15 Rohit Ramanan T G 8 16 Warude Satyam 8 17 De Silva Osheen 8 18 Joy Lazar M.A. 8 19 Dave Kantilal 7½ 20 Suhaib Ahmad 7½ 21 Anadkat Kartavya 7½ 22 Srikanth K. 7½ 23 Kathiravan M. 7½ 24 Vishwanath Prasad 7½ 25 Biswajit Nag 7½ 26 Rahul Ubadhyay 7½ 27 Esshan Wadhawan 7½ 28 Arijith M 7½ 29 Rupesh Ranjan 7½ 30 Mota Pankit 7½ 31 Mohd. Arshi Khan 7½ 32 Aswin Kumar B S 7½ 33 Deepak Singh 7½ 34 Inamdar Sameer 7½ 35 Rishabh Nishad 7½ 36 Aravind K 7½ 37 Sooraj M R 7½ 38 Merryston David Scanny 7½ 39 Anchit Vyas 7½ 40 Singh Soram Rahul 7½ 41 Chaitanya Sairam Mogili 7½ 42 Baig Akram 7½ 43 Sri Sai Baswanth P 7½ 44 Bakshi Rutuja 7½ 45 Yashpal Arora 7½ 46 Dhanush Ragav 7½ 47 Kadav Omkar 7½ 48 Aravindaswami T 7½ 49 Nikhil M 7½ 50 Patil Jitendra 7

Category C:final standings Rk Name Pts 1 Anirudh Jain 9½

2 Devi Das Suresh Pai 9 3 Ravindra P 9 4 Kesavan G 9 5 Mohit Kumar Soni 9 6 Sanjib Mali 9 7 Piyush Khurana 8½ 8 Rohit S 8½ 9 Raghunandan Rohit 8½ 10 Vinay Gadpayle 8½ 11 Uttam Prakash Sharma 8½ 12 Darji Javahar H 8 13 Ram Kumar R 8 14 Chodasita Ramanjineyulu 8 15 Vaishant Kumar Gangwani 8 16 Satyam Pratap 8 17 Satvik Sharma 8 18 Nagargoje Dhananjay 8 19 Solanki Rutvik 8 20 Vangala Prashanth 8 21 Chauhan Narayan 8 22 Mihir Godawat 8 23 Ragesh Sarma.M 8 24 Kavya Aggarwal 8 25 Shivshankar Iyer S 8 26 Sheikh Jahan 8 27 Shiraz Ahmad 8 28 Kolomwe Willian 8 29 Dinesh Pathak 8 30 Md. Furqan Khan 8 31 Venkatesan B 8 32 Nishchay Arora 8 33 Mohammad Zubar 8 34 Tuhin Kashyap 7½ 35 Venkatesh K 7½ 36 Harshit Amarnani 7½ 37 Binu Sebastian 7½ 38 Dhiman Mitra 7½ 39 Sharma Harsh Yogesh 7½ 40 Paritosh Malvi 7½ 41 Darsh Kansal 7½ 42 Bajpai Anil 7½ 43 Devender Sunil Kumar 7½ 44 Bhat Siddharth K 7½ 45 Tejash Jain 7½

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The 10th Chennai Open International Grandmas-ter Chess Tournament 2018 for Sakthi Group Dr. N. Mahalingam Trophy was organised in two Air

Conditioned halls in a three-star hotel, The Vijay Park situated at 12, Jawaharlal Nehru Salai, Inner Ring Road, Arumbakkam, Chennai, 600106. The arrangements in-side these halls were excellent and as per the standards of any world event according to FIDE rules (Already World Junior was conducted in same hall in the year 2011). Many big names are associated with this organ-isation throughout these years.

This event was organized by prominent chess players and key personalities of various chess activities in Tamil Nadu, at AICF and FIDE levels Mr. D V Sundar Vice President, FIDE, Mr. B. Murugavel, Vice President, TNSCA, Mr. P. Stephen Balasamy General Secretary, TNSCA, Mr. R. Anantharam Chairman, Arbiters’ Commission, TNSCA & AICF, Mr. S. Paul Arokia Raj, Mr. R. Srivatsan accompanied by other chess players, volunteers, coaches and sportsmen from Chennai and Tamil Nadu.

The tournament was played from 18thJanuary to 25th January 2018 and conducted in the Swiss League (Dutch System) format, comprising 10 rounds, with two rounds on two days (2nd& 4th day) else one round per day. The main thinking time was 90 minutes to each player along with 30 second increment per move from first move.

Arjuna Awardee International Master Manuel Aaron, along with Shri D. V. Sundar, Vice President AICF, other dignitaries on dais were Mr. B. Murugavel, Mr. P. Stephen Balasamy, Mr. R. Anantharam and myself Mr.Nitin Shenvi.The function began with aprayer which was followed by lighting the sacred lamp by the hands of guests and the honourable members. As per chess tradition the tournament was inaugurated by Arjuna Awardee and International Master Manuel Aaron, who made the first move against top seed GM Timur Gareyev who is the Guinness World record holder for the World Blindfold simul chess.

Local talents IM Karthikeyan P., IM Visakh N R, IM Nitin S., Arjun Kalyan along with IM Raghunandan Kaumandur Srihari of KAR were thought as probables for norms.In the event out of 267 players 16 Grand master, 19 International Master, 2 Women International Master, 7 Fide Masters, 5 Women Fide Masters,7 Candidate Masters, 3 Women Candidate Master, 9 Arena Grand Master, 3 Arena International Master and a Arena Candidate Master took part out of which 259 were rated players and 8 unrated players. In this event total 22Federations took part comprising ofone player each from Australia, Spain, Germany, Malaysia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, & Zimbabwe, two players each from Bangladesh, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Nederland, Nepal, Russia, Singapore, United States of America, &Uzbekistan, three players each from Egypt, Ukraine, &Vietnam, 6 from France and most participants were from India at 218. The top seed, GM Timur Gareyev, was from United States of America, having ELO rating 2605, followed by Russian Grandmaster Ivan Rozum having ELO rating 2595 and last year’s champion GM Tukhaev Adam of Ukraine was fifth seed in this event.

7th round started again with a draw between GM DeepanChakkravarthy J. of ICF and GM Tukhaev Adam of UKRon the top board buton 2nd board GMRozum Ivan of RUS defeated the then joint leaderFMKarthikVenkataraman of AP. Board number 3 to 6 ended in draw. The games were played between GMTiviakov Sergei of NED, GMAtalik Suat of TUR, IM Sidhant Mohapatra of ODI and Muthaiah Al of TN who equalled with their respective opponents namely FMErigaisi Arjun of TEL, Pranav V of TN, GMPruijssers Roeland of NED and IMVisakh N R of TN. After this round joint leader’s names were GMTukhaev Adam of UKR, GMRozum Ivan of RUS, GMDeepan Chakkravarthy J. of ICF and GMLaxman R.R. of ICF scoring 6 points each. They were closely followed by 15 rivals scoring 5½ points each.

As the tournament had started coming to an end with no definitive sign of a sole leader or worthy contender, fierce fightsbegan to be witnessed yet again. There were decisive results on both the top two boards. GMTukhaev Adam ofUKR lost to GMRozum Ivan of

RUS and GM Deepan of ICF lost to his Fellow National GM Laxman R.R. of ICF. On third board GM Dzhumaev Marat of UZB defeated GM Tiviakov Sergei of NED. IM Nitin S. of TN equalised with GM Sivuk Vitaly of UKR, IM Llaneza Vega Marcos of ESP tied with GM Atalik Suat of TUR and GM Pruijssers Roeland of NED drew with Muthaiah AL of TN. At the end of 8th round, GM Rozum of RUS and GM Laxman of ICF were ahead of other competitors scoring 7 points each. They were pursued by IM Visakh N R of TN, GM Dzhumaev of UZB and FM Erigaisi Arjun of TEL each scoring 6½ points.

In the penultimate round GM Rozum defeated GM Laxman to wrest the point and become sole leader going into the final round. As all others who were on 6.5 points drew he was able to extend his lead to a full 1-point margin into the final round. He had scored 8 points while 8 of his nearest contenders were on 7 points. Considering the variations possible in the tie-break GM Rozum had to play even the last round with full strength and it was not to be an easy cakewalk for him to the title even after the 1 point lead as he was going to face the top seed GM Gareyev Timur in the final round.

In final round, GM Gareyev Timur of USA played very strong game against GM Rozum of RUS and overpowered him in all respects. FM Karthik Venkataraman of AP lost to FM Erigaisi Arjun of TEL and GM Laxman R.R. of ICF defeated IM Visakh N R of TN. When discussed with GM Laxman, he said that, “I will be beaten or I will beat but I will not try for a draw.” This attitude made him successful and winner of this event.

GM Laxman won the championship whereas GM Rozum was runner up and received Rs. 2,00,000 along with glittering trophy and Rs. 1,50,000 respectively.

The prize distribution function was presided by Shri D V Sundar, (VP, FIDE and AICF), the Chief Guest was Shri Bharat Singh Chauhan, (Chairman, FIDE Technical Commission (TEC), Chairman, Commonwealth Chess Federation, Deputy President, Asian Chess Federation and Hon. Secretary, AICF) along with Shri P Stephen Balasamy, (General Secretary, TNSCA & Tournament Director), Shri B Murugavel (VP, TNSCA & Organising Secretary) and Shri R. Anantharam (Councillor, Arbiter Commission, FIDE, Member, Qualification Commission, FIDE, Member, Systems of Pairings and Programs, FIDE, Chairman, Arbiters’ Commission, TNSCA & AICF and Technical Director of this event). Personally I believe

because of visionary players turned administrators like Bharat Singh Chauhan Sir, Dongre Ji, along with Sundar Sir etc. that Indian chess scenario is growing exponentially. The prizes were distributed by the hands of Shri Bharat Singhji. I wish to express my sincere thanks to our AICF, Central Council and all of them who were directly or indirectly involved in this prestigious international grandmaster event from India and excellent support offered by them and TNSCA during the event. I am also thankful to all my team of Arbiters and Volunteers for their performance and support during this event. It was a pleasure to be part of such an important function. Once again thank you all.

The tournament was completed in a peaceful manner and no appeals arose. Appeals Committee comprised of GM Rozum Ivan of RUS, GM Deepan Chakkravarthy J. Of IND, GM Tiviakov Sergei of NED, GM Nguyen Duc Hoa of VIE and GM Czebe Attila of HUN as the main members and IM Ameir Moheb of EGY and IM Llaneza Vega Marcos of ESP as reserve members.

This event was really a stroke of luck for many players, as many of them gained considerable ELO rating of 100 or above. Special mention has to be made of Sanjay D G who gained ELO rating 154, Samant Aditya S who gained ELO rating 142, WFM Lakshmi C & AIM Ashwin Sairam both gained ELO rating 138.

Three norms were made in the event.Karthik Venkatraman and Nikhil Dixit made IM norms and Lakshmi C made WIM norm

Final standings:Rk Name Club Pts1 GM Laxman R.R. ICF 82 GM Rozum Ivan RUS 83 GM Gareyev Timur USA 84 GM Dzhumaev Marat UZB 85 FM Erigaisi Arjun TEL 86 GM Deepan Chakkravarthy J. ICF 7½7 GM Pruijssers Roeland NED 7½8 IM Sidhant Mohapatra ODI 7½9 IM Rathnakaran K. KER 7½10 IM Raghunandan K.S KAR 7½11 GM Atalik Suat TUR 7½

10th Chennai Open International Grandmaster Chess Tournament for Dr. N. Mahalingam Trophy

Laxman wins titleby IA Nitin Shenvi ,Chief Arbiter

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12 GM Nguyen Duc Hoa VIE 7½13 GM Tukhaev Adam UKR 714 FM Karthik Venkataraman AP 715 IM Visakh N R TN 716 IM Llaneza Vega Marcos ESP 717 GM Solodovnichenko Yuri UKR 718 GM Tran Tuan Minh VIE 719 GM Horvath Adam HUN 720 IM Khusenkhojaev M TJK 721 IM Praveen Kumar C ICF 722 Ajay Karthikeyan TN 723 Ram S. Krishnan TN 724 IM R.Balasubramaniam TN 725 Dixit Nikhil MAH 6½26 IM Hegde Ravi Gopal KAR 6½27 GM Tiviakov Sergei NED 6½28 GM Sivuk Vitaly UKR 6½29 GM Czebe Attila HUN 6½30 Muthaiah Al TN 6½31 IM Nitin S. TN 6½32 CM Kushagra Mohan TEL 6½33 Tiwari Arjun RLY 6½34 Arjun Kalyan TN 6½35 IM Kandil Adham EGY 6½36 Harikrishnan.A.Ra TN 6½37 Barath Kalyan M TN 6½38 GM Roy Chowdhury S RSPB 6½39 FM Gajwa Ankit MP 6½40 IM Deshmukh Anup MAH 6½41 Phoobalan P. ICF 6½42 IM Karthikeyan P. ICF 6½43 Thanki Hemal Karsanji GUJ 6½44 Sahil Tickoo HAR 6½45 Joshi Govind Ballabh DEL 6½46 IM Murali Krishnan B T TN 6½47 Senthil Maran K TN 6½48 Bala Kannamma P TN 6½49 IM Shetty Rahul MAH 6½

50 Nguyen Phuoc Tam VIE 6½51 Dahale Atul MAH 6½52 Vatsal Singhania JHAR 6½53 Kumar S. TN 654 Saravana Krishnan P. TN 655 FM Hafiz Arif Abdul INA 656 CM Rajarishi Karthi TN 657 Mithil Ajgaonkar MAH 658 Samant Aditya S MAH 659 WFM Divya Deshmukh MAH 660 Sanjay D G TN 661 WIM Chitlange Sakshi MAH 662 Harshavardhan G B TN 663 Nagare Akhilesh MAH 664 Sumit Grover J&K 665 IM Ameir Moheb EGY 666 WFM Saranya J TN 667 WCM Mrudul Dehankar MAH 668 Harini S. TN 669 Nawin J J TN 670 Manu David S R TN 671 FM Maheswaran P. TN 672 Souhardo Basak WB 673 Srihari L PON 674 Alan Diviya Raj TN 675 CM Rohith Krishna S TN 676 AGM Srihari L R TN 677 Saksham Rautela UTT 678 Bharat Kumar Reddy P AP 679 Rohit S TN 680 Sanjay S Pillai KER 681 IM Gokhale Chandrashekhar MAH 682 A Sharadchandra Dalvi MAH 683 WFM Lakshmi C TN 5½84 CM Bharath Subramaniyam H TN 5½85 Pranav V TN 5½86 Bhambure Shantanu MAH 5½87 Mohite Ranveer MAH 5½

88 Hari R Chandran KER 5½89 Balasubramaniam H TN 5½90 Shubham DEL 5½91 Vignesh B TN 5½92 Pranesh M TN 5½93 Singh S. Vikramjit MAN 5½94 Balkishan A. KAR 5½95 Mehta Naitik R GUJ 5½96 Divya Lakshmi R TN 5½97 Parthasarathy R KAR 5½98 CM Nikhil Magizhnan TN 5½99 Chittal Sairaj MAH 5½100 CM Shahil Dey ASM 5½101 Srikrishnan P TN 5½102 AGM Yuvan Bharathi K S TN 5½103 WIM Michelle Catherina P TN 5½104 Kadam Om Manish MAH 5½105 AGM Vignesh B TN 5½106 Priyamvada Karamcheti AP 5½107 Ghelani Dhairya MAH 5½108 Shrija K M TN 5½109 CM Tanmay Jain PUN 5½110 Nayanikaa Muralidharan TN 5½111 Triton Maxime FRA 5½112 Nitin Shankar Madhu TN 5113 AGM Tarun Kanyamarala IRL 5114 AGM Jubin Jimmy KER 5115 AGM Siddharth Jagadeesh SGP 5116 Masango Spencer ZIM 5117 Shelke Sankarsha MAH 5118 Manish Anto Cristiano F TN 5119 AGM Sa Kannan TN 5120 Soham Datar MAH 5121 Jayachandra Srinivas V TN 5122 Sradhanjali Jena ODI 5123 Sibi Visal R TN 5124 Poorna Sri M.K TN 5125 Hari Suresh KER 5

126 AGM Rathneesh R TN 5127 Jagadish P KAR 5128 Karthik Sai Ch AP 5129 Lama Surbir NEP 5130 Jaeel Atharva MAH 5131 Shyam Kumar M TN 5132 Kishore Kumar J TN 5133 Tajane Ganesh MAH 5134 Dinesh Rajan M TN 5135 WFM Bommini Mounika A AP 5136 Samdani Sahil Sagar GUJ 5137 Kumthekar Shubham MAH 5138 Ayushh Ravikumar TN 5139 Sudarshan Bhat KAR 5140 Dhrupad Kashyap ASM 5141 Hiren K G TN 5142 Swarnamala B TN 5143 Vijay Anand M. TN 5144 Anilkumar K.V. TN 5145 Nitin M Pai KER 5146 AyyappanP Santhana P TN 5147 Raghavendra G KAR 5148 Gokulraj K TN 4½149 Anup Shankar R TN 4½150 Thaga Sheriff M TN 4½151 Godson Merlin E TN 4½152 Kanishk S K TN 4½153 Karthik K KER 4½154 FM Fadi Marko EGY 4½155 Mota Pankit MAH 4½156 WCM Jyothsna L TN 4½157 Patil Ketan MAH 4½158 Shetye Siddhali MAH 4½159 AIM Trisha Kanyamarala IRL 4½160 AGM Vignesh N TN 4½161 Rohit Vassan S TN 4½162 AIM Ashwin Sairam TN 4½163 Tamojit Chakraborty WB 4½

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Captain All Bengal State Amateur FIDE Rated Tournament 2018 (Below 2000),Kolkata

Rahul Krishna Viswanathan wins titleby Amit Kumar Biswas, Chief Arbiter

Captain All Bengal State Amateur FIDE Rated Chess Tournament 2018 (Below 2000) was held at ICCR, Kolkata from

22nd Jan to 25th Jan 2018. 242 players which included 154 International rated play-ers from different parts of the West Bengal participated in this mega chess event which was spread over four days.The event was held under FIDE rules with a time control of 60 minutes and 30 seconds increment from move 1. Digital Chess Clocks were used in all the boards.

The total prize fund of the event was Rs.1,00,000. The Tournament was played un-der Swiss System with 8 rounds and had Arka Sengupta of Kolkata as the top seed. With Round one starting on time and the play-ers went into their business mode from the start itself in the beautiful venue, which was provided by 64 SQUARES and Bengal Chess Association. The tournament progressed on expected lines as seeded players registered comfortable victories on earlier part of the event. Suddenly during the 6th round seven players jointly lodged a petition against one of the players named Nirmalya Bose, that he uses his mobile phone unethically in the toilet. Immediately me along with Biswanath Banerjee, organiser and Deputy Chief Arbiter of this tournament and FA Mrinal Ghosh look after the matter and caught him red handed. Nirmalya Bose confessed of using stockfish in his mobile and we checked that the board position and the postion shown in his mobile was the same. We suspended him immedi-ately from the tournament and sent a mail to Mr. Atanu Lahiri , Jt. Sec, AICF and Hon.

164 Negi Virender Singh DEL 4½165 Benasir M TN 4½166 Thamaraiselvi P TN 4½167 Harsh Suresh TN 4½168 Dinesh Kumar J TN 4½169 Harshad S TN 4½170 Krishna K R TN 4½171 Samyak L TN 4½172 Raghul Saro S TN 4½173 Madhavan R Munjanattu KER 4½174 Avinash Ramesh TN 4½175 Kaustubh Balaji TN 4½176 Sannidhanam Anurag AUS 4½177 Thiyagarajan Tamilselvi TN 4½178 Larmet Nino FRA 4½179 WCM Vishwa Vasnawala GUJ 4½180 Honnesh Sankaran TN 4½181 Mithun Raj A TN 4½182 Muthu P TN 4½183 Shreyash Shuvam P ODI 4½184 Jack Samuel TN 4½185 Hari Madhavan N B TN 4186 Thrish Karthik TN 4187 WFM Tarini Goyal CHD 4188 Arnav Maheshwari TN 4189 Sanjay Thiruvengadam TN 4190 Patil Harshal MAH 4191 Chaithanyaa K G TN 4192 Tarimo Didik Widiarso INA 4193 Shadhursshaan R TN 4194 Vinay R Jumani TN 4195 Abhay Bandewar MP 4196 Mokashi Rohit MAH 4197 Wolf Walter GER 4198 Arhan Chethan Anand KAR 4199 Ilamparthi A R TN 4200 Rakshith Srinivasan KAR 4201 Rohith S TN 4

Sec, Bengal Chess Association for immediate action.

Finally 13 years old Rahul Krishna Viswana-than of Lakshmipat Singhania School bagged the Championship crown along with Rs. 10,000/- and a beautiful champions trophy. Ambarish Sharma emerged the 1st Runner up to pocket a cash prize of Rs. 8000/- while Ayush Jaha finished as 2nd runner up and bagged Rs. 6000/- in his purse.

Earlier in a colourful Opening ceremony, Mr. Atanu Lahiri, Jt. Sec, AICF & Hon. Sec, BCA, Mr. Amar Roy , Vice President of BCA, Mr. Partha Das, Jt. Sec. Of BCA , Mr.Rajesh Raja , CAB Official, Mr. Biswarup Pal,an eminent business personality, were present in the dais. Closing ceremony was held in a befitting manner. Chief guest was Mr. Lakhotia, Pres-ident BMA Stainless Ltd, our Title Sponsor , IM Sayantan Das , Mr. Amar Roy & Mr. Atin Sengupta, Vice President BCA, Official from Friends Sporting Union were the other dig-nitaries in the podium and gave away the prizes to the winner.

I should appreciate the 64 SQUARES commit-tee & BMA Stainless Ltd. , the Title Sponsor of this event for their wonderful support and also to the supporting staff specially Mrs. Arpita Banerjee, Mrs. Sanchita Ghosh, Mr. Arkajit Pal, Mr. Subrata Sarkar & Mr. Sayak Banerjee who worked with us for the past 7 days. A very good team of arbiters along with a group of dedicated officials made the

Indian composition wins honours in WCCT

In the final award for the 10th World Chess Composition Tournament organ-ized under the aegis of World Federation for Chess Composition three-movers of C.G.S.Narayanan won the 8th and 10th place. The theme: In a direct mate in 3 moves in the same variation the black defensive motive and the white response are of the same tactical nature. For ex-ample, if Black is making a square evac-uation defence then White is making a square evacuation on second move. Black unpin is replied by white unpin and so on.

C. G. S. Narayanan (India)8th-9th place,10 WCCT 2016-17

Mate in three moves

Key 1.Qc6! ( 2.Rg4+ Kf5 3.Qg6)1…R(7)xe5/R(3)xe5/Qxe5

2.Bd6/Qd6/Qc7The problem features black pinning ver-sus white pinning. Three different black defences pinning WRg5. In reply three different white moves pin the black pieces which pin WRg5. Two pin mates including threat occur in each variation. One of the judging countries Croatia observes:”One of the heaviest motives for execution, the direct pinning, is shown in three varia-tions (with two pin-mates in each); those by WQ are nicely differentiated.

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tournament successful. Finally I must thank 64 SQUARES and Mr. Atanu Lahiri , Secretary of Bengal Chess Association , for having given me the chance to work as a Chief arbiter for this wonderful tournament.Final ranking Rk Name Pts 1 Rahul Krishna V 7 2 Ambarish Sharma 7 3 Ayush Jha 6½ 4 Akash Tiwari 6½ 5 Shouvik Kar 6½ 6 Goutam De 6½ 7 Sayantan Mukherjee 6½ 8 Dilip Das 6 9 Mullick Saikat 6 10 Sambarta Banerjee 6 11 Samip Roy 6 12 Sumit Roy 6 13 Mukherjee Dyutimoy 6 14 Rupam Mukherjee 6 15 Ananya Bothra 6 16 Roy Pallabi 6 17 Debarghya Samanta 6 18 Atri Chattopadhyay 6 19 Satya Sekhar Mitra 5½ 20 Basak Bishal 5½ 21 Dhritabrata Kundu 5½ 22 Avijaan Roy Choudhury 5½ 23 Samar Chatterjee 5½ 24 Aditya Bikram Paul 5½ 25 Shaati Majumder 5½ 26 Agnivo Ghosh 5½ 27 Soham Saha 5½ 28 Pramit Chanda 5½ 29 Eshan Bhattacharjee 5½ 30 Shinjini Sengupta 5½ 31 Anubhab Gupta 5½ 32 Diya Chowdhury 5½ 33 Abhirup Das 5½ 34 Anirudha Menon 5½ 35 Shounak Mazumder 5½ 36 Sourabh Dutta 5½

37 Parikshit Majumder 5½ 38 Aritra Ganguly 5½ 39 Soham Dey 5½ 40 Mandal Ardhendu 5½ 41 Deep Dutta 5½ 42 Mangaldeep Mitra 5 43 Shambo Dutta 5 44 Aryan Bandyopadhyay 5 45 Rohan Nag Chowdhury 5 46 Sankalan Shah 5 47 Prasenjit Das 5 48 Anish Rooj 5 49 Mayukh Chatterjee 5 50 Saikat Saha 5 51 Arijit Ghosh 5 52 Zaveri Chatterjee 5 53 Debarpita Ghosh 5 54 Aritrya Pal 5 55 Amit Kumar Santra 5 56 Pratyay Chowdhury 5 57 Sanjay Kumar Sadhukhan 5 58 Chatterjee Rudrani Charan 5 59 Abijit Mistry 5 60 Supriya Guru 5 61 Saanket Das 5 62 Sujeet Chakraborty 5 63 Anjishnu Mondal 5 64 Raghuraj Pratap Singh 5 65 Madhav Patel 5 66 Tanmoy Roy Chowdhury 5 67 Surajit Mondal 5 68 Rayudu Sai Charan Raj 5 69 Debapriyo Saha 5 70 Rwitik Chakraborty 5 71 Nirmalya Bose 4½ 72 Subhabrata Roy 4½ 73 Srijit Some 4½ 74 Ayan Pal 4½ 75 Soumen Mondal 4½ 76 Anushka Gupta 4½ 77 Aditya Chatterjee 4½ 78 Shankhodip De 4½ 79 Arka Sengupta 4½

The Ganesan Memorial FIDE Rated Open Chess Tournament being organized by KKDCA commenced with a flying start

from 26th Jan 2018 to 29th Jan 2018.Four days of enthusiasm and enjoyment were experienced by the promising players on ac-count of all the challenges across the chess board and intellectual battles amongst them.

This 8 round Swiss System, Classical format – FIDE Rated Open Chess Tournament started with an inauguration function, presided by Mr. Ephrame, IA Joint-Secretary of TNSCA. International Arbiter Mr.Winston, Chief Arbi-ter welcomed the gathering. Dr. Suresh Pre-mil Kumar, Principal of Stella Mary’s College of Engineering, was the Chief Guest of the ceremony. Secretary of KKDCA, Mr. Rex, de-livered the vote of thanks. Players Technical Meeting was conducted and followed by this, first round, began at 11.a.m on Friday, the previous week.

219 players from various parts of TamilNadu and from our neighbor state Kerala have taken part in this tournament.

International Master, Ramnathan Balasubra-maniam from ICF, Chennai has clinched the Winners title and has become this year 2018’s Ganesan Memorial Champion. The prize-distribution function took place on the final day, the 29th Jan 2018 at about 6.p.m in the evening. Prizes were given by the Chief Guest, President of KKDCA, CA. Kulathooran Pillai, who presided over the ceremony. After the Chief Arbiter’s report, Mr. Ephrame, Joint-Secretary of TNSCA, delivered a special address and thanked the

players, for their participation. Followed by that address, Secretary of KKDCA, Mr. A.F. Rex thanked specifically the participants, parents, coaches, managers, arbiters and other dignitaries. Subsequently, Prizes were distributed. Final standings: Rk Name Pts 1 R. Balasubramaniam IM 7½ 2 Sathya Giri V 7 3 Sivakumar C. 6½ 4 Genish Prakash J 6½ 5 Dharmaraj P. 6½ 6 Mani Bharathy 6½ 7 Bharkavi S 6½ 8 Chandra Sekharan A P 6½ 9 Achaya Vijayan 6½ 10 Kannan R. 6 11 Ram Kumar G M 6 12 Muralidharan R. 6 13 Rebecca Jesumarian 6 14 Unas K.A. 6 15 Athish S 6 16 John Christopher 6 17 Nithyan S 6 18 Ashvin Venkat G 6 19 Girish G 6 20 Arulkumar S 6 21 Ananthapadmanabh D V 5½ 22 Vijayaraj R. 5½ 23 Vinoth M 5½ 24 Sanjeev M 5½ 25 Manikanda Prabhu B V 5½ 26 Sanjay Sreekandan 5½ 27 Arnold P 5½ 28 Ramachandran S M 5½ 29 Priya Varshini T 5½ 30 Sivaram Sivarajan 5½ 31 Lekshanth M 5½

Ganesan Memorial FIDE Rated Open Chess Tournament,Nagercoil

Balasubramaniam wins Ganesan Memorialby Winston, Chief Arbiter

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IIFL 3RD Mumbai Open International Grandmaster Chess Tournament, Mumbai

Maghsoodloo Parhan of Iran wins at Mumbaiby IA S.Paul Arokia Raj

315 players drawn from 23 national fed-erations were in the fray vying for the top honours in the IIFL 3RD Mumbai Open In-ternational Grandmaster Chess Tournament organized by Indian Chess School at Mount Litera School International , Mumbai. This included 18 GMs, 2 WGMs, 20 IMs and 11 WIMs apart from handful of FIDE masters which enhanced the norm chances. The ad-ditional highlight of the event was adopting accelerated pairing for the first two rounds which paved way for the higher seeds to meet title holders in the very beginning of the tournament. The event was played in a sophisticated hall in Basement 3 with 114 games shown as live.The fact that the leadership baton kept on changing till half way mark of the tournament only proved that there was always a war of nerves among the top contenders. However the leadership issue was resolved when the 18 year old GM Maghsoodloo Parhan of Iran emerged as the sole leader after accounting for talented youngster FM V.S.Rathnavel in the sixth round. In the successive two rounds he could defeat two Indian GMs in a row. The causalities include GM Deepan Chakravarthy and the top seed Abhijeet Gupta. In the ninth and the final round Maghsoodloo settled for a draw against the formidable Italian GM David Alberto to emerge as the straight champion with 8 points. In a two way tie for the second spot David Alberto with 7.5 points relegated fellow GM Gareye Timur to the second spot. The third placed GM Timur also called the Blindfold Chess King performed a Blindfold Simultaneous match against 12 players win-ning 9 and drawing with 3 during middle of the tournament.

Before the beginning of final round, as many as six players were in the race for securing their maiden norms. However only two could salvage a norm by obtaining the requisite result. They are Erigaisi Arjun (Telengana) and Divya Deshmukh (Maharstra) with both securing the maiden IM and IWM norm re-spectively.The icing on the cake of this week long Mumbai chess festival was the simultaneous display given by the World Rapid champion Viswananthan Anand against selected 20 players who was also the guest of honour for the closing ceremony.

Final ranking Rk Name FED Pts1 GM Maghsoodloo Parham IRI 82 GM David Alberto ITA 7½3 GM Gareyev Timur USA 7½4 GM Deepan ChakkravarthyJ. IND 75 GM Atalik Suat TUR 76 GM Tukhaev Adam UKR 77 IM Yeoh Li Tian MAS 78 GM Gupta Abhijeet IND 79 IM Khusenkhojaev Md TJK 710 GM Nguyen Duc Hoa VIE 711 GM Swapnil S. Dhopade IND 712 GM Tran Tuan Minh VIE 713 Sammed Jaykumar Shete IND 714 GM Horvath Adam HUN 6½15 GM Rozum Ivan RUS 6½16 FM Erigaisi Arjun IND 6½17 GM Shyam Sundar M. IND 6½18 Patil Pratik IND 6½19 IM Karthikeyan P. IND 6½20 IM Ameir Moheb EGY 6½21 Debarshi Mukherjee IND 6½22 GM Barua Dibyendu IND 6½

23 IM Sidhant Mohapatra IND 6½24 Bharat Kumar Reddy P IND 6½25 Pranav V IND 6½26 Muthaiah Al IND 6½27 GM Rahman Ziaur BAN 6½28 FM Mitrabha Guha IND 6½29 GM Czebe Attila HUN 6½30 Saurabh Anand IND 631 FM Rathanvel V S IND 632 FM Fadi Marko EGY 633 GM Deviatkin Andrei RUS 634 IM Nitin S. IND 6 IM Kandil Adham EGY 636 FM Sauravh Khherdekar IND 637 WFM Divya Deshmukh IND 638 IM Deshmukh Anup IND 639 WIM Srija Seshadri IND 640 IM Rathnakaran K. IND 641 IM Girish A. Koushik IND 642 IM D Bala Chandra Prasad IND 643 Tiwari Arjun IND 644 Dixit Nikhil IND 645 Kunal M. IND 646 Kulkarni Vinayak IND 647 IM Kulkarni Vikramaditya IND 648 Goswami Vedant IND 649 Mithil Ajgaonkar IND 650 WIM Pratyusha Bodda IND 651 Singh S. Vikramjit IND 652 FM Raja Rithvik R IND 653 Rakshitta Ravi IND 654 Shiva Pavan TSharma U IND 655 CM Nikhil Magizhnan IND 656 CM Aditya Mittal IND 5½57 CM Karthik Kumar Pradeep IND 5½58 Pradeep Kumar R A IND 5½59 FM Shailesh Dravid IND 5½60 Nguyen Phuoc Tam VIE 5½61 IM Harsha Bharathakoti IND 5½62 FM Deshpande Aniruddha IND 5½63 Koustav Chatterjee IND 5½64 CM Gukesh D IND 5½65 CM Rohith Krishna S IND 5½

66 Dahale Atul IND 5½67 Samant Aditya S IND 5½68 Lokesh N. IND 5½69 Manush Shah IND 5½70 Dileep Kumar R IND 5½71 IM Abu Sufian Shakil BAN 5½72 WFM Jishitha D IND 5½73 Hari Madhavan N B IND 5½74 IM Wohl Aleksandar H. AUS 5½75 Balkishan A. IND 5½76 IM Udeshi Aditya IND 5½77 Hari Suresh IND 5½78 IM Swayams Mishra IND 5½79 Moksh Amit Doshi IND 5½80 Balasubramaniam H IND 5½81 Harshavardhan G B IND 5½82 CM Mendonca Leon Luke IND 5½83 FM Phadke Sohan IND 5½84 WGM Swati Ghate IND 5½85 Gaikwad Siddhant IND 5½86 Ajay Karthikeyan IND 5½87 Bala Kannamma P IND 5½88 Bhambure Shantanu IND 5½89 Thanki Hemal Karsanji IND 5½90 Nagare Akhilesh IND 5½91 Hriday Dharmesh Sheth IND 5½92 Bragadeeshwaran C IND 5½93 CM Tanmay Jain IND 5½94 WIM Michelle Catherina P IND 595 WFM Varshini V IND 596 Om Kharola IND 597 Lye Lik Zang MAS 598 Aditya Guhagarkar IND 599 Vrandesh Parekh IND 5100 Aradhya Garg IND 5101 CM Shahil Dey IND 5102 IM Shashikant Kutwal IND 5103 Sarvesh Kumar A IND 5104 Chittal Sairaj IND 5105 Chakravarthy Y V K IND 5106 Kumar Gaurav IND 5107 WGM Kiran Manisha Mohanty IND 5108 Siddharth Sabharishankar IND 5

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Karipaparambil KC Sebastian Mem.Fide Rated Tournament below 1500, Kottayam.

Debargha Daw wins at Kottayamby IA L.R. Bhuvanaa Sai, Chief Arbiter

KKCA 2nd All India FIDE Rated Chess Tournament (Below 1600),Coimbatore

Kathiravan wins at Coimbatoreby IA Ganesh Babu S

Debargah Daw of West Bengal won Ka-ripaparambil KC Sebastian Memorial Below 1500 fide chess Tournament

here at Benjamin Bailey Hall Kottayam on 28th January 2018. 3 days event started on 26th January with 332 participants from 14 states and 2 union territories (Delhi and Pondicherry). 256 players were rated players. The total prize fund of 6, 50,000 was split into 30 main prizes and 25 prizes for rating category. 40 glittering cups were given to various age categories.

Seeded players sailed smoothly for first 2 rounds. Top seeded player Gopinath of Tamil-nadu lost to 10 years old boy Aditya A Chul-likad of Kerala at the end of 3rd round. 31 players shared the lead with full points after 4th round. Shadhursshaan R of Tamilnadu, Unrated players Bit Irom and Asem Jiban Singh of Manipur showed their better per-formance. 11 years old boy Shadhursshaan of Tamilnadu and Debargha Daw of West Bengal jointly shared the lead with 6 points each at the end of 6th round. The clash be-tween these two leaders ended in peace and maintained their lead, Susheel Reddy of AP joined with these two leaders with 6.5 points each after 7th round. Susheel Reddy lost to Shadhursshaan in 36 moves. Debargha Daw beat Kamble Dipankar of Maharashtra on 2nd table after the penultimate round.

In the final round Debargha Daw beat Es-waran P of Kerala and won this tournament. He bagged Rs. one lakh cash award. Shad-hursshaan and Manikuttan K P were in 2nd & 3rd place with 8 points each. They received Rs.75, 000 & Rs.50, 000 cash award respec-

tively. Mr. Rajesh, Secretary, Chess Associ-ation Kerala and Mr. Rajendran, Secretary of Trivandrum district distributed the prizes to the winners. The tournament concluded in a grand manner.

Final standings: Rk Name Pts 1 Debargha Daw 8½ 2 Shadhursshaan R 8 3 Manikuttan K P 8 4 Jayakumar P K 7½ 5 Wagh Varun 7½ 6 Nagasri Saikanth 7½ 7 Susheel Reddy P 7½ 8 Eswaran P 7 9 Mahendar B 7 10 Thomas Valiyaprambil 7 11 Sheth Shemal Ketan 7 12 Aragonda Mohan 7 13 Aman Kumar 7 14 Ramanan M 7 15 Anubhav Patel 7 16 Umesh P 7 17 Prathapachandran K P 7 18 Kamble Dipankar 7 19 Karthikeyan G 7 20 Venkatesan B 6½ 21 Kavi Samrat P 6½ 22 Saravanakumar T S 6½ 23 Sudheesh M A 6½ 24 Loka Prakash A S 6½ 25 Devi Dayal Singh 6½ 26 Senthil Kumar N 6½ 27 Kavya. S 6½ 28 Rishi R 6½ 29 Prasanth K V 6½ 30 Samson D Cruz J 6½ 31 Laiju Ct 6½

S Kathiravan of Tamil Nadu won the KKCA 2nd All India FIDE Rated Chess Tourna-ment Below 1600 organized by Kovai

Kids Chess Academy. The 3 day event was held from 29th to 31st December at B.M.N Kalyana Mandabam, Coimbatore.

The Prize fund of Rs.2,99,000 was split into 20 Main Prizes, 43 Special Cash Prizes in var-ious rating categories & 60 Trophies for age categories. The winner gets Rs.30, 000 and a glittering trophy. The Event attracted 402 players from 8 states and 2 Union Territories out of which 201 players were internationally rated players and 292 players were in the age group of Under-15.

In the first two rounds seeded players sailed smoothly. Top seed Rahul Krishnan of Tamil Nadu lost to Prabeesh of Kerala, while the 3rd seeded player Shanmugasundaram was defeated by Soundariya Lakshmi in the 3rd round. 11 players were leading the tourna-ment at the end of 4th round.

Senthil Kumar and Kathiravan of Tamilnadu joinly lead the tournament with 6.0 points in the 6th round. The clash between the leaders ended in favour of Kathiravan who emerged as sole leader at the end of 7th round. Hridik Rajendran of Tamilnadu who was in the second spot defeated Kathiravan in the 8th rounds to take the sole lead with 7.5 points.Hridik was held to a draw by Mohamed Yousuff on the top board. Hridik & Thanga Manickam tied for the 1st place with Kathi-ravan who won the final round game against Sriram, with 8.0 points each. Kathiravan won the tournament with a better tiebreak

score with a cash award of Rs.30,000 and a glittering trophy.

Prizes were distributed by Mr. Krishnamurthy President ,KKCA. Dignitaries present on the dais Mr. V Vijayaraghavan, Seretary, CDCA. Mr. Santhosh, MD, BMN Kalyana Mandabam, Mrs.Jayalaksmi, Mrs.Vinodhini Santhosh, Mr.Mohamed Yousuff, Joint Secretary, CDCA, Ms.Vidya, Secretary, KKCA. Mr. Krishnamur-thy President, KKCA delivered the vote of thanks.

I thank all the Players, Parents & the co-ar-biters for their kind co-operation to run this event successfully. I Thank All India Chess Federation, Tamil Nadu State Chess Associ-ation, Coimbatore District Chess Association & Kovai Kids Chess Academy for appointing me as a chief arbiter for this event. Final ranking Rk Name Pts 1 Kathiravan S 8 2 Hiridik Rajendran 8 3 Thanga Manickam M 8 4 Ranjith Kalaiyarasan 7½ 5 Senthil Kumar E 7½ 6 Mohamed Yousuff A 7½ 7 Dharshan Venkatachalam 7½ 8 Tejaswi R 7½ 9 Lakshmi Raja Perumal K 7 10 Sriram K 7 11 Devaraja G 7 12 Arnav Agrawal 7 13 Sivaa G M 7 14 Midhun Kumar M A 7 15 Abirami S 7 16 Muralishankar J T 7 17 Yuvaraju K 7

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3rd master mind open fide rated chess tournament, Pammal

Balasubramanian wins title by R.Srivatsan, Chief Arbiter

18 Harsha R 7 19 Senthil Kumar S 7 20 Jagan V 6½ 21 Umeshwaran S A 6½ 22 Kaushik G Iyer 6½ 23 Nirupam Gogoi 6½ 24 Chinnadurai S. 6½ 25 Nirmal L 6½ 26 Vinoth Kumar M 6½ 27 Shanmugasundaram G. 6½ 28 John Christopher 6½ 29 Binu Sebastian 6½ 30 Jariya Harsh 6½ 31 Vishnu Ram M 6½ 32 Sasikumar.S 6½ 33 Kannan R 6½ 34 Kalidass C. 6½ 35 Midhru Jayan K 6½ 36 Domnic Xavier R S 6½ 37 Sadi Ram Swarup Reddy 6½ 38 Vishnu Bharani S 6½ 39 Arunachalam S 6½ 40 Benatin Britto Hamlet Raj 6½ 41 Sharan Krishnan 6½ 42 Jeremiah S V 6½ 43 Ashvin Venkat G 6½ 44 Raja A 6 45 Rajkumar S 6 46 Aravinth Shanmugam S 6 47 Prabeesh K 6 48 Chandrasoodan Chinnaiah 6 49 Kishore Dev S 6 50 Yashavishree N 6 51 Arjun Balamurali 6 52 Reno Noel 6 53 Vishwa Dheep D N 6 54 Kasi Viswanathan N 6 55 Ajay D 6 56 Thulasingam V 6 57 Yatharth Jain 6 58 Rudrashish Chakraborty 6 59 Rathish R 6 60 Rajiv A 6

61 Magesh M 6 62 Joshua Anto A 6 63 Allen S David 6 64 Devaraj L 6 65 Narenthiran M 6 66 Murugesan S 6 67 Ram Satvat J 6 68 Anantha Krishna Nayak M 6 69 Kumaran Sachidhanandam 6 70 Nandish V S 6 71 Vijayakumar S 6 72 Balasubramanian V 6 73 Ramesh M Rajan 6 74 Sujith K J 6 75 Arivarasu K P 6 76 Anish A 6 77 Saideepesh M R 6 78 Farhan M 6 79 Alexander P 6 80 Tarunkrishna C B 6 81 Ethan V Johnson 5½ 82 Muthukrishnan S 5½ 83 Kavin Karthik Velmurugan 5½ 84 Abdul Gafoor A Rasheed 5½ 85 Ajithkumar Murugan 5½ 86 Sarveshwaran V 5½ 87 Siddharth Sathish 5½ 88 Tamilarasan B 5½ 89 Suresh P 5½ 90 Rakshitha P 5½ 91 Darell Walldo Jude H 5½ 92 Kishore M 5½ 93 Anand Selvarajan 5½ 94 Ahalya A 5½ 95 Sasmith A Suvarna 5½ 96 Kishor Kumar G 5½ 97 Abenav M 5½ 98 Vinodh C 5½ 99 Vijayaraghavan G 5½ 100 Karthi R 5½ 101 Saravanan R 5½ 102 Devin S V 5½ 103 Adhithya A 5½

The 3RD Master Mind Open FIDE Rated Chess Tournament organised by Master Mind Chess Academy was held at Sri

Ganesh Thirumana Mandapam, Pozhichallur Main Road, Pammal, Chennai - 600075 from 27th to 31st December 2017. Four hundred and thirty six players including 286 rated players from four Federations viz. India, Malaysia, USA and England and from 13 States viz. Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Pondicherry, Telengana, Tamilnadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal were participated in the five days ten round Swiss tournament. International Master R. Balasubramaniam was the Top seed and FM M. Vinoth Kumar the second seed in the tournament.

Top seed R. Balasubramaniam became a sole leader with slender half point lead with 6 points and the end of the 6th round. At the end of the penultimate round it was a three way tie with 8 points between R. Balasubra-maniam, M. Vinoth Kumar and Manu David Suthandram. In the final round Balasubra-maniam defeated R. Abdul Azeem and be-came a winner with of this third edition with 9 points. The game between Vinoth Kumar and Manu David ended in a draw and they fin-ished second and third position respectively.

Earlier this event was inaugurated by Smt. Malathi Balakrishnan, Director, Sankara Group of Educational Institutions along with Mr. Nandakumar, Secretary, Tamilnadu Pri-mary, Matric and CBSE School association on 27th December 2017.At the Prize distribution function, Mr. P. Ste-

phen Balasamy, Hon. Secretary, Tamilnadu State Chess Association was the Chief Guest and distributed the prizes. Mr. M. Muthu Kumar, Jt. Secretary & Secreatary, Kanchi DCA, Mr. P.R. Dinesh Kumar, Senior Advocate, Chennai High Court were also present and distributed the prizes.. Mr. S. Chandrasekar, Retd. Accounts Officer, SIDCO welcomed the gathering and Mr. P. Palaniappan proposed vote of thanks. The event went on very well without any problem.

I was assisted by the team of arbiters-Deputy Chief Arbiter IA P. Palaniappan, FA C.Na-tarajan,FA,C.R.Ramesh Babu,FA,A. Gowri Shankar, NA S. Balambhal, NA R.M. Valliam-mai, NA S. Visalakshi and NA A. Rajkumar.

Final Ranking Rk. Name Pts. 1 IM R Balasubramaniam 92 FM Vinoth Kumar M. 8.53 Manu David Suthandram R 8.54 Kumar S. 8.55 Keerthivasan K 86 Harini S. 87 Thamaraiselvi P 88 Rathina Sabapathi A 89 Rahul Bharadwaj B 810 Arjun C Krishnamachari 7.511 Karthick Narayanan S 7.512 Hemanth Raam 7.513 Abdul Azeem R 7.514 Aravind K 7.515 Ayyappan P Santhana Prabu 7.516 Abinandhan R 7.517 Varsha C R 7.518 Swapnil Raj 7.519 Gupta Bhola Nath 7.5

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18th North Eastern States FIDE Rating Chess Championship, Shillong

Rahul Gurung of Sikkim winsby Debasish Barua IA, Chief Arbiter

The 18th North Eastern States FIDE Rating Chess Championship had been held at Shillong , Meghalaya from 29th

January to 3rd February 2018 and ended with great success. Shillong is exclusively called the queen in the ‘abode of clouds’, and it truly keeps up to this name. The place is the epitome of serenity with modernity. Till the present day, the place forms to be the hub of the North-East.

The Inaguration function was held at Don Bosco Hall, Laitumukhram, Shillong on 29th January 2018 at 2 p.m. The Programme was inaugurated by Smti M. War Nongbri, IAS , Director, Sports and Youth Affairs Meghalaya. Shri Boney J. Kharbani , President MCA pre-sided over the function. Among other dis-tinguished guests, there were Th. B. Singh Secretary, MCA & Joint Secretary AICF, Shri Debasish Barua, International Arbiter and Shri Gautam Chakravarty, Vice- President, MCA etc.

The number of participants was 212 including 115 Fide rated players. There were 9 rounds of play . There were players from North East States namely Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Sikkim and Tripura participated in this tournament..The playing venue was excellent with good and comfortable table and seating arrange-ments, sufficient lighting, all necessary amenities like pure drinking water, sufficient toilets etc.During the playing session, the Organisers provided refreshments to all players. There was no major dispute/protest regarding the conduct of the tournament.

The tournament’s success with such a huge number of players proves that the future of chess is in safe hands.

The champion of the tournament was Ra-hul Gurung of Sikkim with 9 points and he was awarded cash prize of Rs 30,000 with a trophy. Sikkim was proud to bag the trophy for the first time. Runner’s up position was bagged by Trailokya Nanda of Assam, with 8.5points was awarded Rs 20,000. The third position was taken by Tamang Thendup of Sikkim with 8.5points and received Rs 15,000. The players of Meghalaya also played well. The Meghalaya Chess Association in-spired the players by awarding a number of consolation prizes.

Sri Gautam Chakravarty Vice-President of MCA presided over the prize distribution ceremony along with Sri L. Warjrj Chief Guest, Ex. Engineer., All India Radio, Shillong, Shri Boney J Kharbani, President, MCA, Shri B. Singh, Secretary MCA ,& Joint Secretary were the other distinguished guests.

The organizers, officials, arbiters and volun-teers worked whole-heartedly and sincerely to make the tournament successful. The players and guardians also extended full co-operation which attributed to the smooth running of the tournament. In my opinion, both the events were greatly successful.

Final ranking Rk Name Pts 1 Gurung Rahul 9 2 Trailokya Nanda 8½ 3 Tamang Thendup 8½

Vidit wins ChallengersQualifies for Masters in TATA Steel Chess

The final round of Tata Steel Chess was a relatively calm one for the leaders in both categories. With the white pieces, Vidit Gu-jrathi avoided any mishap in a Queen's Gam-bit against Jorden van Foreest and agreed to a 24 move draw in the Challengers. This put the onus of winning on Korobov, who was in the run for the title. The Ukrainian GM failed and went down against Dmitry Gordievsky. In the Masters, leaders, Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri both settled for solid draws against Sergey Karjakin and Wei Yi respectively, forcing a playoff which the reigning world champion won quite comfortably.

For Indian fans, the final round of the Challengers group of Tata Steel Chess piqued more interest than the Masters. With his win in the penultimate round, Vidit Gujrathi had broken the long-standing deadlock between him and Anton Korobov for the top spot and was on the brink of clinching the title. A win would have sealed the win once and for all, depriving Korobov of even a mathematical chance of making a comeback. A draw, on the other hand, would have forced the Ukrainian to go for broke. Vidit Gujrathi chose the latter. In his game against Jorden van Foreest in the final round, Vidit chose to go with his usual Queen’s pawn opening with the white pieces to which the Dutch teenager responded with a Queen’s Gambit accepted. Queens were traded quite early in the game and soon an exchange of a pair of rooks followed. By the 24th move, Vidit successfully exchanged another pair of rooks and made it clear to his opponent that splitting points was more or less inevitable. The two signed the truce immediately.After the game, Vidit said, “Today, I thought I should play a bit but not risk too much. That is why I went for this endgame. He (Van Foreest) messed up in the opening, somehow, and I got a very comfortable position. But, at some point in the endgame, I missed one tactic and allowed him to liquidate after which, in the final position, I had absolutely no chance.”

With Vidit’s game drawn, the onus was now on Korobov to win his game and catch up in the lead. But the task ahead was a difficult one. Korobov was pitted against Dmitry Gordievsky, a 2622 rated grandmaster, and had the black pieces. Korobov opened with the Gruenfeld Defence and as was required of him, threw all but the kitchen sink at his opponent to carve out a win. But Gordievsky, who had a slightly better

24 25

position out of the opening, went on to improve his position a lot more in the middle game. Soon, the Russian GM went on to win an exchange and after a long, tumultuous 78 move battle, Korobov was forced to resign.

Talking about his win, the 23-year-old said: “This victory means a lot to me because I qual-ify for the Masters' section in 2019. The pressure as the top seed was immense, but I am glad that I managed to prove myself. I am looking forward to playing against players like Carlsen, Anand, Caruana, So, Giri and others in 2019.” Vidit also sees this win as a big milestone towards his dream of battling for the world title in the years to come. Talking about his future plans, he said, “I want to continue working hard on chess and aim for the World Championship title in the years to come. For this I would need to play more against the best players in the world. I am hoping that this per-formance will get me invitations to the top Round Robin events in 2018.”Besides, qualifying for the Masters segment in the next edition of Tata Steel Chess, this win also earned Vidit 5.3 rating points. His current rating has now shot up to 2723 and has put him on the 30th spot in the world rankings.

Vidit’s performance also won him praise from the Indian chess legend, Viswanathan Anand. “Vidit, I thought, was completely professional how he qualified for the A. So, my congrats to him for that,” Anand said.

Vidit,Santosh Gujrathi (2718) - Van Foreest,Jorden (2629) [D27]Tata Steel Challengers Wijk aan Zee (13), 28.01.20181.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 Possibly a psychological choice- White is unlikely to go for the riskiest lines when a draw is so likely to give him first place. 3.e3 Nf6 [3...e5 4.Bxc4 exd4 5.exd4 Nf6 is a bit more imbalanced, thanks to the isolated queen's pawn] 4.Bxc4 e6 5.Nf3 c5 6.0–0 Nc6 [6...a6 might have with hindsight given Black a few perks, assuming White plays the endgame anyway, and plays it in a similar style: 7.dxc5 Bxc5 8.Qxd8+ Kxd8 9.Bd2 Ke7= Black will set up with ...b5, ...Nbd7, ...Bb7. The position is equal.] 7.Nc3 a6 8.dxc5 Qxd1 9.Rxd1 Bxc5 10.Bd2 0–0 (see diagram) [10...Ke7 is less advisable here

thanks to 11.Bd3!? and Black faces a few problems completing development] 11.Rac1 Bd7 12.Be2 The idea is clearly enough Na4-c5, but right now there is an issue with playing it, so Black can safely ignore the idea. [12.Ne2 Bb6 13.Bc3 was more forc-ing, but also didn't give much: 13...Rfd8 14.Ne5 Be8!=] 12...Rfd8 13.Na4 Ba7 14.Be1 [14.Nc5 Bxc5 15.Rxc5 Ne4 equalises, unless White can somehow mount a convincing claim that his opponent's bishop is genuinely bad.] 14...Be8 15.Rxd8 [15.Nc5 Rxd1 16.Bxd1 Rb8=] 15...Nxd8 16.b3 [16.Nc5 Rc8=] 16...Nd5 17.Kf1 Nc6 [17...Bb5!? was most principled, and would have been an interesting way for Black to remind his opponent

that the draw is subject to good play from both sides and is not a God-given right. 18.Ne5 (18.Bxb5 axb5 19.Nc3 Nxc3 20.Bxc3 f6„) 18...f6 19.Nd3 Ne7 20.Nab2 Rc8= Black has kept his equality without making any concessions.] 18.Nc5 Rb8 19.a3 Nce7 20.Ne5 Rc8 21.Ned3 Rc7 22.b4 Maybe not the most precise way to prosecute the advantage. [White could have had something following 22.e4 Nf6 23.f3 Bb5 24.Bg3!] 22...Bxc5 23.Rxc5 Bb5 24.Rxc7 (see diagram) Here the draw was agreed, so we assume White could not really be bothered pressing but was fine to halve out as soon as the draw margin was large enough for Black to completely forget about winning himself.[24.e4 Bxd3 25.Bxd3 Rxc5 26.bxc5 Nf6„ is probably not that dangerous for Black anymore] ½–½

Courtesy:chessbase india

FIDE Arbiter Seminar & Examination- A reportA FIDE Arbiter seminar and examination thereafter was organised by Tamil Nadu State Chess Association and All India Chess Federation at the Hotel Royal Regency, Chennai from 26th to 28th January 2018. Fifty six participants from various states of India took part in the three day event.

Sri. D.V. Sundar, Vice Pres-ident FIDE and AICF pre-sided the inauguration of the seminar and Sri. Bharat Singh Chauhan, Secretary of AICF and Chairman, Technical Commission, FIDE was the chief guest. Prof. R. Anantharam, Coun-cillor of FIDE Arbiters’ Com-mission and Chairman of Arbiters’ Commission, AICF was the lecturer, assisted by IA Dharmendra Kumar, Member, Arbiters’ Commis-sion, AICF.

Lectures were mainly focused on Laws of Chess on the first day. On the second day, Rating, Tile, Tiebreak and Pairing regulations were elaborately discussed, besides case studies on Laws of Chess. On the third day, Anticheating and Arbiter regulations were taught in ad-dition to Competition rules. The participants had a lively interaction with the lecturers.The examination was held in the afternoon of the third day.

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Cont.from p.224 Silseng N Marak 8 5 Heikrujam Jacky Singh 7½ 6 Singh Y. Dhanabir 7½ 7 Rishideep Bordoloi 7½ 8 Nitish Das 7½ 9 Iftikar Alom Mazumdar 7½ 10 Rajdip Das 7 11 Neelabh Jyoti Borthakur 7 12 Silkam Sangma 7 13 Singh Soram Rahul 7 14 Gurung Rohit 7 15 Santanu Borpatra Gohain 7 16 Dupit Tabu 7 17 Rijied Katrai 7 18 Nandan Buragohain 7 19 Nirmalya Chakraborty 7 20 Singh Bhogen R K 7 21 Aarohon Bharadwaj 7 22 Raja Basar 7 23 Satabdajit S Baruah 7 24 Amit Saraf 7 25 Robert Runremmawia 7 26 Pranab Kumar Nath 7 27 Lalnunsanga 7 28 Dhrubajyoti Borpatra 7 29 Biraj Baruah 7 30 Dhrupad Kashyap 6½ 31 Arunabh Gohain 6½ 32 Stephen Malsawmtluanga 6½ 33 Bobby Lyngdoh 6½ 34 Gillford Thangkhiew 6½ 35 Rorelkima C 6½ 36 Rajbeer Ahmed 6½ 37 Madhab Sarma 6½ 38 Anurag Debnath 6½ 39 Abhishek Borthakur 6½ 40 Rishita Sinha 6½ 41 Naorem Cha Yoihenba 6½ 42 Subhranil Majumder 6½ 43 Lalrinmawia 6½ 44 Pahlira 6 45 Hage Lasa Nado 6 46 Das Monaj 6

47 Bipul Das 6 48 Sutnga H.D. 6 49 Tapir Mize 6 50 Punyo Appa 6 51 Dibyansu Lahon 6 52 Guru Aribam Arosemit Sharma 6 53 Arunika Ghosh 6 54 Surajit Das 6 55 Parthajit Saha 6 56 Chettri Bhoj Bahadur 6 57 Lyndem Gary Brandon 6 58 Lalremruata 6 59 Abhinav Dubey 6 60 Anuj Protim Boruah 6 61 Mridumoloy Das 6 62 Deep Das 6 63 Paiadaohi Lhuid 6 64 Nihad Islam Hazarika 6 65 Abhinaba Roy 6 66 Wilseng G Marak 6 67 Ngangom Nongrenkhomba 6 68 Barbith M Sangma 5½ 69 Lalbiak Mawia 5½ 70 Kaustabh Das 5½ 71 Manab Bhattacharjee 5½ 72 Debalina Kundu 5½ 73 Devabarenya Gogoi 5½ 74 Syed Jahan Hussain 5½ 75 Gautam Chakravarty 5½ 76 Sharma Durga Prasad 5½ 77 Das Debayan 5½ 78 Kevinson Jyrwa 5½ 79 Krittibash Deva Sarmah 5½ 80 Subrata Nandy Roy 5½ 81 Challangga D Sangma 5½ 82 Kharbani Boney J 5½ 83 Rangke E R Marak 5½ 84 Anurag Kalita 5½ 85 Francis A Sangma 5½ 86 Abhinab Gogoi 5½ 87 Madhu Tok 5½ 88 Adreeja Sinha 5½ 89 Nityananda Hajong 5½

The seminar was organized in Chennai, India, by the Tamil Nadu State Association, in coop-eration with the All India Chess Federation and under the aus-pices of FIDE.The venue of the Seminar was the Royal Regency Hotel, in Chennai. The Lectur-er was IA Prof. R. Anatharam (IND), FIDE Arbiters’ Commis-sion Councillor and FIDE Lec-turer and Assistant Lecturer was IA Dharmendra Kumar (IND). Fifty-six (56) people from India

participated in the Seminar and in the examination test held after the lectures.

The following succeeded in the test and they will be awarded a FIDE Arbiter Norm, after the approval of the next FIDE Presidential Board:

NAME FIDE ID Rajaraman 5018307 Uma Maheswaran P 5075050 Sandeep T 35005960Sunitha Jain 25036130Kavitha JE 5044200 Naresh Krishna S 25003780Arasu B 25932977Chockalingam Balaji 35016350Rajagopalan CV 25932985Ramesh S 25662155Ravichandran K 5003113 Bhaskar V 5068746 Rajasekaran P 5015740 Ravichandran S 5008263 Sathish P 25682326Banel Andross J 25707329Karpagavalli T 25631179Jeganathan N 25760076Kalyanaraghavan VS 5081513 Umapathy M 25933299Chitra R 46623752Ebenezer Rajakumar D 35084585

Jameel Kamate 25921819Shankar Raman N 25064568Sri chitra P 25933280Kosanam Karunakar Reddy 25097466Naveen Karthikeyan P 35017438Aruthi M 5041341 Thanikachalam E 25619144Jayaraman K 25625764Manikandan C 35094203Sivasubramanian B 46638210Anitha Rajendran 25698095Anandan Arunachalakani 25756320Arasappan T 3506051 Shankar Govindaraj B 25751611Sudhakar H 25717146Senthil Kumar V 45016771Sundara Rajan S 46637621Praveen G 25677136Santhi M 25064576Kannan M 25932993Elango M 45044040Kannan PL 45043418Sathiamoorthi R 25933000

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Sri Ram School International FIDE Rating Chess Tournament,Tindivanam

Kunal wins the titleby S.Balaraman, Chief Arbiter

Shri Ram School International Open FIDE rating chess tournament was held at Shri Ram School. Omandur. Tindiva-

nam, Tamil Nadu from 26th to 29th January 2017 . This is the 1st Open fide rating chess tournament conducted by Kingmaker chess Academy, Tindivanam. The event attracted 261 players from all over India, including ma-jor states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Haryana, Orissa, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Pondicherry and two players from Nepal. Top seed of the event was Gunal M of Tamil Nadu. The 8 round event was conducted in 4 days. Total cash prize was RS. 500100/- Kunal M was the top seed of the tournament.

Kunal M of TN with an Elo of 2345 emerged the winner with 7 points. He remained unde-feated with 6.5 points and draws in the final round. In the last round he shared the point with Prasannaa S of TN. He bagged the prize money of RS. 60000 and a glittering trophy. The first runner up is Prasannaa.S of TN with 7 points and the second runner up is Hirthickkesh Pr of TN with 7 points. This is the first rating chess tournament organized at this venue. All facilities required for smooth conduct of a chess tournament were available at the venue.

We should appreciate the Shri Ram School Management for their wonderful support and also to the supporting staff specially, Principal of the School, who worked with us for the past 4 days. A very good team of arbiters along with a group of dedicated King chess Academy officials made the tournament suc-cessful. Finally I must thank Mr.P.Stephen

Balasamy, Secretary Tamil Nadu State Chess Association and Mr. Bharat Singh Chouhan, Secretary, All India Chess federation for having given me the charge to work as Chief arbiter for this wonderful tournament.

Prize distribution Ceremony took place at 5.30 pm. Mr.S.Balaraman, Joint.Secretary of Tamil Nadu State Chess Association and Chief Arbiter, Mr.Abslam, Secretary,VDCA, Mr.Gowri Karthykeyan, Secy. Kingmaker Chess Academy, Mr.Natarajan, Secretary, Master Mind Chess Academy, A.David Doss and M.Vinothkumar distributed the prizes to the winners.

Final Rankings:Rk Name Pts1 Kunal M. 72 Prasannaa.S 73 Hirthickkesh Pr 74 Syed Anwar Shazuli 6½5 Manigandan S S 6½6 Sekar B 6½7 Surendran N 6½8 Gunasekaran K. 6½9 Vinoth Kumar M. FM 6½10 Badrinath S. 611 Bala Kannamma P 612 Ram S. Krishnan 613 Kabhilan S 614 Kumar S. 615 Selvabharathy T 616 Ilamparthi A R 617 Dhanush Ragav 618 Vignesh B 619 Vinay R Jumani 620 Lama Surbir 621 Babu S. 6

22 Ravi Kumar K 623 Manu David Suthandram R 624 Vishwa Bala Kumaran M 625 Balachandar E 626 Kathiravan M. 627 Vinoth Kumar M 628 Rathneesh R 5½29 Anilkumar O.T. 5½30 Thamaraiselvi P 5½31 Hiren K G 5½32 Shrija K M 5½33 Gnanasekar .G 5½34 Varsha C R 5½35 Abdul Azeem R 5½36 Dharani Kumar M S 5½37 Rohith Krishna S CM 5½38 Gugan G 5½39 Senthil Kumaran T.H. 5½40 Harivardhini I 5½41 Balaji P 5½42 Divyabharathi Masanam 5½43 Gopikrishna N. 5½44 Tamizh Selvan Ganesan 5½45 Subramanian V 546 Ayyappan P Santhana Prabu 547 Farhaan M 548 Nithish Muthukumaran 549 Dewangan Yogesh 550 Jinan Jomon 551 Vaibhav Singh Verma 552 Kiruthika B 553 Swarnamala B 554 Sathyanarayanan S. 555 Kishan Chand 556 Rathina Sabapathi A 557 Kishore V 558 Dhandapani Perumal 559 Vengatesh Krishnan C 560 Midilesh Ms 561 Aaditya R 562 Dhineshwar R S 563 Raju M 564 Kalki Eshwar D 5

65 Thrayambhakesh A 566 Yashwant Annamalai 567 Hariharan Vinayagamurthy 568 Gokula Chandhiran A 569 Tina C 570 Balasubramaniam Nataraj 571 Rohan M 572 Emayasri S 573 Poonguzhali N 574 Ilakiyan M Xavier Jeen 575 Evrin Selvam 576 Gokula Vishnu R 577 Sivashankar M 4½78 Gautham Prasanth 4½79 Charan K 4½80 Subhiksha E 4½81 Thamizharasan J 4½82 Rohit Ramanan T G 4½83 Srinivasan D.R. 4½84 Pruthivirajan M 4½85 Priye Bikram 4½86 Venkatesh Babu Sundaresan 4½87 Kannan.V 4½88 Kalpita P N 4½89 Neha M B 4½90 Sandhya S 4½91 Sanjay Kumar Mittal 4½92 Chandra Prakash Sankar 4½93 Mitul K H 4½94 Daranya S 4½95 Ramyasri A 4½96 Sriram Suresh 4½97 Keshav Padmanabhan 4½98 Deepak Raj R 4½99 Srinivasa Narayanan V S 4½100 Bharanidharan Nedunchezian 4½101 Varadharajan S 4½102 Sudhakar M S 4½103 Mayur S 4½104 Gayathri M 4½105 Herald K A 4½106 Murahari A H 4½107 Divesh G 4½

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Suraj FIDE Rating Tournament, Kupwad (Sangli)

Pratik Mulay Wins the Tournamentby IA Rajendra Shidore

Nutan Buddhibal Mandal Sangli is cel-ebrating its 75th Year of conducting the chess Tournaments, The oldest

Chess Organizer in India. Suraj FIDE Rating Chess Tournament, Kupwad (Sangli) 2018 was organized jointly by Nutan Buddhibal Mandal Sangli & Suraj Sports Foundation at Krushna Valley Sports Club between 26th January 2018 & 30th January 2018 under the auspices of All Marathi Chess Association & All India Chess Federation.

The tournament was inaugurated by Mr. Pravinsheth Lunkad, (Director, Suraj Sports Foundation), along with Chintamani Limaye, Secretory Nutan Buddhibal Mandal Sangli. Mr. Sanjay Kedge(Secretary, All Marathi Chess Association, Maharashtra) graced the stage with the presence of Jayant Gokhale(FIDE Trainer). Nutan Mandal Felicitated the guests, Arbiters followed by Lamp Lighting cere-mony. Mr. Pravinsheth Lunkad along with Senior Player Mahajan Snehal Inaugurated the Tournament by Playing moves over the chessboard.

The tournament was played with Swiss Pair-ing Rules for 9 Rounds between 156 players from various parts of India out of which 86 Players were FIDE Rated. Nayak Biswajit of Orissa was Top Sid of the tournament with ELO rating 2010.

Round One didn’t witnessed any major upsets but unrated Jadhav Prasad played beautifully in late middle game & destroyed Bachalkar Sadanand(1429) with a Win in very first round. Jain Kushagra drawn his game with

magnificent sacrifice in endgame after which perpetual checks came and game ended in a draw. Round Two started with opening crackers on board 11 where Lohit Rushi-kesh(1173) of Maharashtra blown 423 Elo Higher Mahajan Snehal(1596) at Board no 11. Third round also undergone one dramatic game where Shreya Revankar (1369) drew her game with Yash Kapdi(1704). Rounds 4 & 5 were bit silent and at the end of round 5, 4 Players namely Nayak Biswajit, Patel Mudassar, Mulay Pratik & Ajay Pardeshi were on lead with 4.5 out of 5. At the end of round 6, Nayak Biswajit was on 5.5 and gained sole lead with 0.5 points. As chess is also a Game, Up-& Downs started from round 7 where Mu-lay Pratik demolished Nayak Biswajit’s Lead with full point at top board. Patel Mudassar also joined 6’s club at the end of round 7. Pratik continued his form at round 8 & won his game quite easily with Mudassar. Untill the last round, winner was not clear as Pratik had lead of only half point. But within half an hour after the start of the round 9, winner was finalized as Shriraj Bhosale of Maharshtra came late to round due to failure of his bike while coming to venue. The venue was located in MIDC area with ample parking space, place for parents to sit, canteen facility and drinking water. Also Free dormitory accommodation was provided to all players by organizers. All the organizers, volunteers and players were very supportive and cooperative.The Arbiter’s team consisted of Chief Arbiter: IA Shidore Rajendra, Dep. Chief: FA Sohani Vivek & Arbiters: FA Rathi Pavan, NA Deepak

Vaychal, along with the volunteers namely, Pornima Upalavikar, Yogesh Kumbhar & Kai-lash.The total cash prizes worth INR 2,00,000/- were distributed by the Chief Guest Mrs. Pandiyan (Well Known Business woman from Sangli), Shri. Chintamani Limaye(Secretary, NBM) , Mrs. Smita Kelkar (Treasurer, NBM) Arbiters IA Rajendra Shidore, FA Vivek So-hani, FA Pavan Rathi.The Tournament con-cluded in very Sporting manner & the players and parents were quite happy about overall conduct of the tournament.

Final Ranking:Rk. Name Pts. 1 Mulay Pratik 8 2 Pardeshi Ajay 7 3 Mishra Sanjeev 7 4 Patel Mudassar 7 5 Jail Digambar 7 6 Kapadi Yash 7 7 Nayak Biswajit 6.5 8 Kiran Panditrao 6.5 9 Bhosale Shriraj 6.5 10 Shriya R Revankar 6.5 11 Patil Sharvil 6.5 12 Khasbardar Soham 6.5 13 Dandekar Umesh 6.5 14 Pradeep Pandya 6.5 15 Dongre Pushkar 6.5 16 Makote Pandurang 6.5 17 Bachalkar Sadanand 6.5 18 Dhoot Vinit 6 19 Mahat Nihal 6 20 Mayekar Ayush 6 21 Satawase Abhay 6 22 Boramanikar Tanisha S 6 23 Patil Pranav Prafulla 6 24 Kakade Atul 6 25 Vanjale Prasad Prakash 6 26 Mantrawadi Harsh 6 27 Dandekar Anuj 6

28 Patil Sarang 5.5 29 Patil Harshal U 5.5 30 Kazi Nazir 5.5 31 Akshit Jha 5.5 32 Gandhi Sagar 5.5 33 Aditya Savalkar 5.5 34 Anvesh Bandekar 5.5 35 Mane Kumar 5.5 36 Khairmode Aditya 5.5 37 Mane Sandeep 5.5 38 Jain Kushagra 5.5 39 Walekar Parth 5.5 40 Chindake Harikrushan 5.5 41 Dande Vyankatesh S 5.5 42 Malani Shubham 5.5 43 Shikalgar Digvijay 5.5 44 Upase Riddhi 5 45 Vaval Aaditi 5 46 Deshpande Amit 5 47 Limaye Nandkishor 5 48 Lohit Rushikesh 5 49 Kulkarni Anandrao 5 50 Sarvesh Sahadev Rao 5 51 Deodhar Mudit 5 52 Sarode Om 5 53 Sawant Sarvesh 5 54 Manna Sachita 5 55 Patil Arya S 5 56 Rohit Sambhaji Budake 5 57 Aware Kedar 5 58 Mayekar Jayesh 5 59 Mahajan Snehal 5 60 Jahagirdar Shrihari 5 61 Netra P Savaikar 5 62 Kore Prajwal 5 63 Mhetre Prem 5 64 Kulkarni Suraj 5 65 Bartakke Satyam 5 66 Raut Nitin Bhaskarrao 5 67 Abhishek Sudhakar Jadhav 4.5 68 More Arya 4.5 69 Kamble Deepak 4.5 70 Naik B S 4.5

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4thTeekay International FIDE Rated Chess Tournament,Thoothukudi

Kunal emerges Championby IA Prof.R.Anantharam, Chief Arbiter

The 4th edition of the Teekay FIDE Rated chess tournament, organised by Teekay Chess Centre was held at a

panoramic venue of the VOC Port Trust, Tho-othukudi from 31st January to 3rd February 2018. One hundred and thirty one partici-pants from TamilNadu, Karnataka, Kerala, U.P. Odisha and Pondicherry participated in the 8 round, 4 day event. The time control of the tournament was 90 minutes to each player with an increment of 30 seconds from move 1. Top seeded IM elect M. Kunal of Tamil Nadu was fresh from his victory in the just concluded rating tournament at Thindivanam. Former under 10 national champion Syed Anwar Shazuli of ICF, international master RamnathanBalasubramniam of Tamil Nadu, national blitz champion Ram S Krishnan of BSNL, winner of several rating tournaments P. Saravana Krishnan of KarurVysya Bank, IA S. Ganesh Babu and many other leading players took part in the event.

The first round witnessed an upset, when H Infant Jose of Tamil Nadu IM Balasubrama-niam, rated 900 points above him. The salient feature of the third round was the draw by P Uma Maheswaran of Madurai against sea-soned N. Lokesh of Hosur. P. Phoobalan of ICF shocked second seeded Saravana Krishnan and N Surendran of Thiruvallur subdued Ram S Krishnan in the fourth round, which resulted in four players – Kunal, Phooblan, AL Muthaiahof Thiruvallurand Surendran leading with a 100% score at the end of the fourth round.Kunal emerged sole leader at the end of the fifth round by beating Phoobalan, as the other game between the co-leaders Surendran and Muthaiah was drawn. Five

players – Surendran, Muthaiah, Syed Anwar, OT Anil Kumar of Kerala and IM Balsubrama-niam were trailing half a point behind.

Kunal marched on with his sixth victory on trot, the victim being IM Balasubramaniam in the sixth round. Muthaiah and Surendran scored fluent wins to maintain their second position with 5.5 points each. Saravana Kr-ishnan, SS Manigandan of Madurai and Phoo-balan were on the third spot with 5 points each. Kunal maintained his half point lead at the end of the seventh and penultimate round by splitting the point with Surendran. The latter and Muthaiah also maintained their second position with 6 points.

Kunal did a Houdini act to escape from the clutches of defeat to carve out a draw against Muthaiah to clinch the trophy, collecting 7 points and Rs.60,000/- as first prize. 6.5 points,Muthaiah, Surendran, Saravana Kr-ishnanand Ram S Krishnan tied for the 2nd to 5th places by scoring 6.5 points and were placed in that order. A total cash prize of Rs.3,20,000/- was distributed as 54 prizes and 64 trophies were presented to various age category winners.

The tournament was a memorable one to all participants and parents because of the excellent centrally air conditioned hall, good accommodation and food. Shri. S. Natarajan, Deputy Chairman, VOC Port Trust was the chief guest for the inau-guration and also the valedictory function. Shri IM Manuel Aaron, Vice President of Thoothukudi District Chess Association and nine times national champion was the guest

of honour on the first day.

Final rankings: Rk Name Pts 1 Kunal M. 7 2 Muthaiah Al 6½ 3 Surendran N 6½ 4 Saravana Krishnan P. 6½ 5 Ram S. Krishnan 6½ 6 Phoobalan P. 6 7 Lokesh N. 6 8 Syed Anwar Shazuli 6 9 Gunasekaran K. 6 10 R.Balasubramaniam IM 6 11 Subramanian R M 6 12 Anilkumar O.T. 5½ 13 Prasannaa.S 5½ 14 Manigandan S S 5½ 15 Ganesh Babu S 5½ 16 Srihari L R 5½ 17 Kathiravan M. 5½ 18 Bharkavi S 5½ 19 Merryston David Scanny 5½ 20 Sriram K 5½ 21 Yukash Ram E 5½ 22 Uma Maheswaran P 5½ 23 Dharani Kumar M S 5½ 24 Dharmaraj P. 5 25 Subbhu Karthick S M 5 26 Arjun Sidharth S 5 27 Joy Lazar M.A. 5 28 Kumaresh A 5 29 Shaktivel Selvaraj 5 30 Sivaa G M 5 31 Aswath S 5 32 Jayakrishna H 5 33 Rebecca Jesumarian 5 34 Kanish Vikraman Adithan B 5 35 Tarunika P 4½ 36 Antony Jesumarian Leslie 4½ 37 Roshan S 4½ 38 Mithesh M 4½ 39 Kathiravan S 4½

40 Tejes Suresh Kumar 4½ 41 Vishwa Bala Kumaran M 4½ 42 Shrija K M 4½ 43 Palanikumar V 4½ 44 Krishan A 4½ 45 Alaguraja M.A. 4½ 46 Karuppasamy C 4½ 47 Rajagopalan 4½ 48 Infant Jose H 4½ 49 Guru Sabari Thirumalai 4½ 50 Sivasubramanian Manoj 4½ 51 Lekshanth M 4½ 52 Rajkumar S 4½ 53 Midilesh Ms 4½ 54 Kannan R. 4½ 55 Subramanian T.V. 4½ 56 Prawin K 4½ 57 Porkalaivani N 4½ 58 Priya Varshini T 4½ 59 Siddhesvarajith P S 4½ 60 Rohit Ramanan T G 4 61 Nithin A V 4 62 Roshan Abendhra Ramesh 4 63 Aashish Niranjan B 4 64 Sam Jebadurai 4 65 Sivasubramanian S 4 66 Hari Sankar V 4 67 Ahalya A 4 68 Kannish Varmaa K 4 69 Mitul K H 4 70 Gowtham S G 4 71 Leaha B 4 72 Magdalene Roy R 4 73 Karthi Ganes M 4 74 Lokesh Varmaa K 3½ 75 Sanjay Kumar Mittal 3½ 76 Mitul Bala S 3½ 77 Mareeswari K 3½ 78 Dhivesh Athithya S 3½ 79 Kishor S 3½ 80 Nabeel M Abubackar 3½ 81 Tharshan M K 3½ 82 Dhilip Santhosh Kumar 3½

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7th National Schools Chess Champion-ship was organized by KKIT University, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha from 27 January

to 01 February, 2018

This chess marathon was organized in nine rounds Swiss format for Under 7 to 15 Boys & Girls category and 7 rounds for Under–17 boys & Girls as per FIDE laws of Chess with a time control of 90 minutes with an incre-ment of 30 seconds per move. A total of 710 children from all over India took part in the event and they enjoyed the hospitality pro-vided by the KIIT University. Shri. Achyuta Samanta, Founder KIIT Group of Institutions, inaugurated the event on 28th January, 2018 at 9.00 A.M in the presence of K.K. Sarma, Hon. Secretary, All Orrissa Chess Association. The nine rounds / seven rounds battle was witnessed by 377 FIDE rated players and 333 Unrated players from 24 states.

The organizers were kind enough to give prizes to the children below 5 year of age. Accordingly eight children were awarded medals. I take pleasure in congratulating the work and time spent by IA Suresh Chandra Sahoo who was incharge of collecting the en-tries used to call me at odd hours to finalize the entries, I take this opportunity to say a very big thanks to Mr.Sahoo for his sincerity in completing the job. I congratulate my Deputy Chief Arbiter IA Asit Baran Choudhury, IA Nihar Ranjan Sasmal, IA Tapas Mohanty, NA Aparajita Gochhikar, NA Jyoti Nanda and other fellow arbiters from Odisha & Tamilnadu, without their as-sistance, the event would not have concluded with grand success. I thank All India Chess

7th National Schools Chess Championship2018,Bhubaneshwar

Eleven medals to TamilnaduN.K.Nandakumar IA,Chief Arbiter

Federation and All Orrissa Chess Association for given me an opportunity to serve as Chief Arbiter.

Final Ranking (U-7 Boys) Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Rosh Jain DEL 7,52 Sathvik Adiga KAR 7,53 Ishaan Singh Khanuja MP 7,54 Khadilkar Shourya MAH 7,55 Mithra Kumaran J K TN 6,56 Gokul G PON 6,57 Dharsan Ratnakar P TN 6,58 Kapoor Tanush HAR 6,59 Amogh Bisht KAR 6,010 Varun R Kodancha KAR 6,0Final Ranking (U- 7 Girls) Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Lakshana S TN 8,02 Aggarwal Tashna UP 7,53 Luxshana B K TN 7,04 Potluri Gulshan AP 7,05 Priyanjali Saha WB 6,56 Sashya Singareddy TEL 6,07 Nysha K Vhatwar MAH 6,08 Pratyasha Jena ODI 6,09 S Priyadarshini Sahoo ODI 6,010 K Alana Meenakshi AP 6,0Final Ranking (U- 9 Boys)Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Bhagat Kush MAH 7,52 Tanish Sai Kavuru AP 7,53 Sriansh Das ODI 7,04 Aarav Lakhani MAH 7,05 Arul Prakash N TN 7,06 Bikash Kumar Lenka ODI 7,07 Apoorv Kamble KAR 6,58 Priansh Das ODI 6,59 Suhaas A TEL 6,510 Mayank Chakraborty ASSM 6,5Final Ranking (U- 9 Girls)Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Shefali A N KAR 7,52 Suhaani Lohia MAH 7,53 Arushi Srichandan ODI 7,04 Vaishnavi R Rao KAR 6,5

5 Aswinika Mani R TN 6,56 Panchal Hiya GUJ 6,57 Ankita Sahoo ODI 6,58 Pournami S KER 6,59 Indira Priyadharshini S TN 6,010 Sneha Halder WB 6,0Final Ranking (U- 11 Boys)Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Shahil Dey ASSM 8,02 Colaco Reuben GOA 7,53 Harsh Suresh TN 7,04 Gawde Prathmesh MAH 7,05 Bang Atharva MAH 7,06 Vedant Nitin Vekhande MAH 6,57 Mahendra Teja Mekala AP 6,58 Swayham P Das GUJ 6,59 Adalja Vanssh A GUJ 6,510 Ananth Ramdas TN 6,5Final Ranking (U- 11 Girls)Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Kheerthi Ganta TEL 7,52 Ratnapriya K TN 7,03 Tejaswi R TN 7,04 Cera Dagaria MP 7,05 Rout Yashita ODI 6,56 Sinthia Sarkar WB 6,07 Yashavishree N TN 6,08 Patel Riddhi R GUJ 6,09 Shivika Rohilla DEL 6,010 Chandankhede Yashika MAH 6,0Final Ranking (U- 13 Boys)Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Pranesh M TN 8,02 Harshad S TN 7,03 Mahitosh Dey ODI 6,54 Adarsh Tripathi DEL 6,55 Manthan Kashyap Datta ASSM 6,56 Barik Jagdish ODI 6,57 Karthik Sai Ch TEL 6,08 Hari R Chandran KER 6,09 Sriram B TN 6,010 Saypuri Srithan AP 6,0Final Ranking (U- 13 Girls)Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Ayantika Das WB 7,02 Dhyana Patel GUJ 6,53 Meenatchi Rajam V TN 6,54 Tanvi Vasudev HadkonkarGOA 6,55 Sanjana Raghunath KAR 6,56 Vijayasubhasri S TN 6,07 Anjitha Krishnakumar KER 6,0

8 Sathwika N AP 6,09 Chinnam Vyshnavi AP 6,010 Prasiddhi Bhat KAR 5,5Final Ranking (U- 15 Boys)Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Anadkat Kartavya GUJ 7,02 Mehta Naitik R GUJ 7,03 Shyam Kumar M TN 6,54 Vignesh Kasi P L TN 6,55 Suganthan S TN 6,06 Samal Aditya Ranjan ODI 6,07 Samdani Sahil Sagar GUJ 6,08 Abhinessh S TN 6,09 Mhatre Rahat Rahul MAH 6,010 Shyam Prasad ReddyK AP 6,0Final Ranking (U- 15 Girls)Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Jain Nityata MP 7,02 Jyothsna L TN 7,03 Nanditha V TEL 6,54 Routray Priyanka ODI 6,05 Chandratreya Prachiti MAH 6,06 Bristy Mukherjee WB 6,07 Prachi Bharti KAR 6,08 Sai Divya M AP 5,59 Srimozhi S TN 5,510 Mistry Tinaz Dinkoo GUJ 5,5Final Ranking (U- 17 Boys)Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Arka Sengupta WB 5,52 Jaisingh Anugraha MAH 5,03 Sibi Visal R TN 5,04 Aaromal R S TEL 5,05 Samal Ansuman ODI 4,06 Upadhyay Prince GUJ 4,07 Tuhin Kashyap ASSM 4,08 Tahilianey Dhruv MAH 4,09 Siddhanth Lohia MAH 3,510 Sandeepta Kumar D ODI 3,5Final Ranking (U- 17 Girls)Rk. Name Club/City Pts.1 Bidhar Rutumbara ODI 5,02 Arushi Kotwal J&K 5,03 Abhirami Madabushi AP 5,04 Srimathi R TN 5,05 Shreya Smruti Mohanty ODI 4,56 Kruti Gangadkar KAR 4,57 Diya Chowdhury WB 4,08 Genita Gladys A TN 4,09 Jayasree Tarini Priya T TEL 4,010 Jinal Yagnik GUJ 3,5

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Annotated by IM Manuel Aaron

Selected games from Chennai GM Open Chess Tournament Sivuk,Vitaly (Ukr) (2550) Godson,Merlin E (Ind)(1818) Annotated by IM Manuel Aaron

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e3 a6 5.Qc2 g6 6.Bd3 Bg7 7.0–0 0–0 8.Nbd2 Nbd7 9.b3 e5 10.cxd5 cxd5 11.dxe5 Ng4 12.Ba3 Re8 13.e6 [D.Barlov 2500 vs R.Simic 2495, Kladovo, Yug Ch, 1994 went: 13.Bb2 Ndxe5 14.Bd4 Nxd3 15.Qxd3 Bf5 16.Qc3 Rc8 17.Qb4 Qe7 18.Qxe7 Rxe7 and 61. draw.] 13...Rxe6 14.Nd4 Re8 15.Rac1 Nde5 16.Be2 Bd7 17.Qc7! White had to play this before black moved back his knight to c6 and blocked the c-file. 17...Nc6 18.Qxd8 [After this excahnge of queens white gets an enduring advantage in the ensuing ending. If 18.Qxb7? Nxd4 19.Bxg4 Bxg4 20.exd4 Rb8 21.Qc7 Qxc7 22.Rxc7 Re2 23.Rd1 Bxd4 24.Bc5 Rbe8] 18...Raxd8 19.Nxc6 bxc6 20.h3 Diagram #

20...Nh6 Black realises that white is going to pressure his weak c6 pawn which is on a semi-open file and plans to bring his knight to d8 in its defence. 21.Bc5 [21.Bxa6?? Ra8 and one bishop dies.] 21...a5 22.Nf3 Ra8 23.Bd1 This prevents ....a5-a4. 23...Rec8 24.Re1 Bb2 25.Rc2 Bg7 26.g4 f5 27.g5 Nf7 28.h4 Nd8 29.Bd4 Ne6 [If 29...Bxd4?

30.exd4 white's grip on the c5 and e5 squares would win.] 30.Bxg7 Kxg7 31.Ne5 Be8 32.Bf3! This makes black's attempt to liber-ate with c6-c5 more and more difficult. 32...Nd8 33.Kg2 Rcb8 34.Nd3 Ne6 35.Rec1 Rb6 36.Be2 h6 37.f4 h5 38.Kf2 Ra7?

[Black could have tried to keep white's ad-vantage to a minimum with: 38...a4 39.b4 a3 40.Rc3 Nc7 41.Bf3 Nb5 42.Rb3 Nd6] 39.Bf3 Ra8 40.Nb2 [40.Kg3] 40...Rb4? [This allows the deadly strike on his c6 pawn. 40...Kf7 moving his king to the theatre of operations (the c-file) was better.] 41.Rxc6!! Bxc6 42.Rxc6± Nf8 43.Bxd5 Rd8 44.Rc5! After this a third pawn falls and white's win is clear. 44...Nd7 45.Rc7 Kh8 46.Nd3!+- The knight enters the field for the final massa-cre. 46...Rbb8 47.Bf7 Nf8 48.Ne5 Rd2+ 49.Kf3 Rxa2 Diagram #

50.Bxg6 Nxg6 [If 50...Ne6 51.Rh7+ Kg8 52.Bxf5 (52.Nd7? Nd4+! 53.Kg3 (53.exd4??

Rxb3#) 53...Ne2+ 54.Kf3 Nd4+ draw!) 52...Ng7 53.Be4+-] 51.Nxg6+ Kg8 52.Ne7+ Kh8 [52...Kf7? 53.Nc6+ wins the rook.] 53.Nxf5 Ra3 54.g6! Raxb3 55.Rh7+ [Af-ter 55.Rh7+ Kg8 56.Nh6+ Kf8 57.g7+ Ke7 58.g8Q+ Kd6 59.Qc4 and Nf5#] 1–0

Muthaiah,Al (2291)Alan,Diviya Raj (1970) [A18]This is an attractive sample of how our young players are playing nowadays. While Muthai-ah is 19, Alan is only 15. 1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e6 3.e4 Bb4 4.e5 Ng8 5.Qg4 Bf8 6.d4 g6

[The game Carls, CJM (Germany) vs Hans Johner (Switzerland, in the 1927 London Olympiad went: 6...d6 7.Bg5 Qd7 8.Nf3 Nc6 9.Rd1 Nge7 10.Bd3 b6 11.0–0 h6 12.Bxe7 Qxe7 13.exd6 cxd6 14.Rfe1 Bd7 15.d5 and black got crushed in 28 moves!] 7.Nf3± Bg7 Material is equal but white has a great space advantage and lead in development as black has only one bishop developed while the rest of his forces are confined to the back rank. 8.Bd3 d5 9.Bg5! f6 [If 9...Ne7 10.Bxe7 Qxe7 11.cxd5 0–0 12.0–0±] 10.Bh4 c6 [Black cannot free himself with 10...dxc4 11.Bxc4 Qe7 12.d5 Nh6 13.Qe4± when black's position is ready to fall apart.] 11.0–0! Qc7 12.Rac1 [This is the natural developing move, creating a pin along the c-file, but allows black to develop his Ng8 with a threat. Stronger was 12.Qg3 fxe5

13.cxd5 exd5 14.Rac1 Ne7 15.Rfe1 0–0 16.Nxe5 Nf5 17.Bxf5 Bxf5 18.Nxd5 and white is winning.] 12...Nh6 13.Qg3 dxc4 14.exf6! Qxg3 Diagram #

15.fxg7! Rg8 [Or 15...Qxg2+ 16.Kxg2 Rg8 17.Bxc4+-] 16.fxg3! The right way to cap-ture on g3 as it opens the f-file for his rook. 16...cxd3 17.Bf6! White is going to cling to his pawn on g7. 17...Nf5 18.Ne5 Nd7 [Black's game has been so pathetic that this is his first queen-side piece to move from its original square! If 18...Nxg7 19.Ne4 Nf5 20.g4 Ne3 21.Bg5! Nxf1 22.Rxf1 Black cannot stop the impending 23 Nd6# by any means.] 19.Ne4 Nxe5 [If 19...Nxg7 20.Nd6+ Kf8 21.Nxc8 Nxe5 22.Bxe5+ Nf5 23.Nd6+-] 20.Bxe5 Ke7 [20...Nxg7 21.Nd6+ Kd8 22.Nf7+ Ke7 23.Nh6+-] 21.g4 Ne3 Diagram # Now white finishes the game with non-stop checks leading to mate.

22.Bd6+ Kd7 23.Rf7+ Ke8 24.Rf8+ Kd7 25.Rxg8 d2 26.Rd8+! Kxd8 27.g8Q+ 1–0

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Annotated by IM Manuel Aaron Annotated by IM Manuel AaronDeepan,Chakkravarthy J (2475) Lax-man,R.R (2434) [A13]This game has a bizarre opening and a mind-boggling middlegame where fluid piece play thrills ones imagination! Worthy of deep study. 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.b3 a6 4.e3N [Wirthensohn 2415 vs O.Sutter 2335, Swit-zerland Ch. 1996 went: 4.Bb2 c5 5.e3 Nc6 6.Be2 Be7 7.0–0 0–0 8.Nc3 d5 9.cxd5 exd5 10.d4 Re8 11.Rc1 cxd4 12.Nxd4 and 27.1–0.] 4...d5 5.Bb2 c5 6.Be2 Nc6 7.cxd5 exd5 8.d4 cxd4 9.Nxd4 Bb4+ 10.Bc3 Bd6 11.Nd2 Ne5 12.h3 0–0 13.Bb2 Re8 14.0–0 Ng6 15.Bd3 Nh4 16.Rc1 [Better was: 16.N4f3 Ng6 17.Rc1] 16...Ne4 17.f4?! [This makes his e3 permanently weak. Better was: 17.N2f3 Nxf3+ 18.Nxf3=] 17...Nc5 18.Bb1? [Preserving this bishop is natural, but not the best and it sets him on the los-ing trail. Better was: 18.Rc3 Nxd3 19.Rxd3 Bf5 20.Nxf5 Nxf5 21.Qg4 g6] 18...Rxe3 19.Rxc5! Diagram # Though white is still in trouble, he makes the best of the situation. 19...Rg3? [19...Bxc5! 20.Qc2 g6 21.Qxc5 Rg3 22.Rf2 Bxh3 23.Kh2 Rxg2+ 24.Rxg2 Bxg2 25.Nc2 Qc8 26.Qe3 Qg4=]

(Position after 19.Rxc5)20.Rxd5 Nxg2 21.Rf3? [White misses the best continuation which involves a queen sacrifice: 21.Ne4 Ne3+ 22.Nxg3 Nxd1 23.Rxd1± White has more than enough for his queen.] 21...Ne3+ 22.Rxg3 Nxd1

23.Rxg7+! Kf8 [If 23...Kxg7 24.Ne6+ Kg8 25.Nxd8+-] 24.Rdg5? [The rook on d5 is doing an admirable job of pinning a bishop against the queen. Better was the threat to win the queen with: 24.Rxh7! Qf6 25.Bf5! Bxf5 26.Rxd6! Bxh7 27.Rxf6 Nxb2 28.f5!+-] 24...Qc7 25.f5 Diagram #

[There is no saving for white. If 25.Rg8+ Ke7 26.Rg2 Nxb2 27.Re2+ Be6 28.Rxa8 Bxf4 29.Nxe6 fxe6 30.Nf1 Qc5+ 31.Kg2 Nd1–+] 25...Nxb2–+ 26.Ne4 Qc1+ 27.Kg2 Qxb1 28.Nxd6 Ke7 29.Nxf7 Qe4+ 30.Nf3 Qc2+? [From the 25th move black has been winning but, probably under time pressure, has so far failed to find the knock-out. This move lets white breathe a little easier. Best would have been to bring his knight which is in the wilderness, on b2, to get uncomforta-bly close to the white king with 30...Nd3!–+ ] 31.Kg3 b5

Diagram # [If now 31...Nd3!? black could

only draw with best play: 32.N7e5+! Kd8! (The tempting 32...Kd6? would lose af-ter some tricky play, which is worth ex-amining in detail. 33.Nc4+! Kc5 (33...Kc6?? 34.Nd4+) 34.Rc7+! Kb4 (34...Kb5?? 35.Nd4+) 35.a3+!! Kxb3 36.Nd4++-) 33.Rf7! (threatening Rg8#) 33...Qf2+ 34.Kg4 Nxe5+ 35.Nxe5 Qe2+ 36.Kh4 Qe4+ 37.Kh5 Qe2+ 38.Kh4 (38.Kh6 Qe3!) 38...Qe4+ Draw.] 32.N7e5+? [This lets the king escape and win without any problem. Bet-ter would have been: 32.f6+ Kxf6 33.Nd8 (Threat 34 Rf7#) 33...Be6 34.Nxe6 Nd1 (34...Kxe6?? 35.Nd4+) 35.Nc5 Qf2+ 36.Kf4 Qe3+ 37.Kg3 Rd8³] 32...Kd6 33.Rf7 Nd1 34.Ng4 Qxa2 35.Rxh7 Qxb3 36.Rg6+ Kc5 37.Rc7+ Kb4 38.Rd6 [38.f6 Bf5!–+] 38...Bxf5 39.Rc1 Bxg4 40.hxg4 Rf8 0–1Karthikeyan,P (2497) Rathnakaran,K (2372) [A04]

After some very unusual opening play, black gets a near winning middle-game. But he bungles it posting his queen on the edge of the board instead of centralizing it. He pays for this strategic error and the white queen dominates the game. A further black error costs him a knight and black is a rook down for two pawns. Then when black is preparing to shake hands in capitulation, white gifts him with a snap mate! 1.Nf3 c5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nc3 g6 4.d4 cxd4 5.Nxd4 Bg7 6.Nc2 Bxc3+ 7.bxc3 Qa5 8.e4 Qxc3+ 9.Bd2 Qe5 10.Be2 [D. Yakovlev vs Ben Menachem 2345, Lloyds Bank Op, London, 1994 went: 10.Bd3 f5 11.f4 Qe6 12.e5 d6 13.0–0 dxe5 14.fxe5 Qxe5 15.Re1 Qd6 16.Bc3 Nf6 17.Qe2 0–0–+ [%emt 0:00:26] and 0–1] 10...Qxe4 Black is two pawns up but lags very much behind in development. If he is able to de-velop his minor pieces and castle, he would be winning. 11.0–0 Nf6 12.Bh6 Qh4 13.Qc1 Threat 14 Bg5 embarrassing the black queen.

13...Ne4! 14.Bg7? Diagram #

[This only activates his opponent's sleeping rook at h8. Better was: 14.Bf3! g5 (14...Nc5 15.Bd5 e6 16.Bg5 Qg4 17.Bxc6 bxc6 18.Qb2 with advantage to white.) 15.Bxe4 Qxh6 16.Re1 0–0] 14...Rg8 15.Bb2 g5 [Black makes a virtue out of his forced 14....Rg8, starting a pawn assault on the white king. However, 15...d6 catching up on his lagging development was safer.] 16.Ne3 d6 17.Nd5! Kf8 With Nc7+ threatened, black had to move his king to either d8 or h8 which was very much in black's scheme of things. 18.Qe3 Nc5 19.Rae1 This move makes his intention of playing f2-f4 evident. Instead, 19 Rad1 threatening a sacrificial attack on e7 was to be considered here. 19...Rg6 [Black uses his rook for the attack and defers development of his bishop. To be considered was: 19...Bf5 20.Ba3 b6 21.Bxc5 dxc5 22.Bf3 g4 23.Be4 Bxe4 24.Qxe4 Rg6µ when black has successfully dealt with his lagging development and kept white's forces at bay.] 20.f4 gxf4! [Also good was: 20...Rh6 21.h3 gxf4 22.Nxf4 e5] 21.Nxf4 Rh6 22.h3 e5! After this move, white's attacking prospects for his two sacrificed pawns has greatly reduced. 23.Nd5 Rg6 24.Kh2 Be6 25.Nc7 Rc8 26.Nxe6+ Nxe6 27.g3 Qh6? Diagram #

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[Not the best! From a near winning position, black now slides to almost equality. In this position, black should keep his queen in a central location, not on the edge. Black was probably guided by the general consideration that his queen was best on the same file as the opponent's king. Best was: After 27...Qe7 28.Qa3 Kg7 29.Bd3 Rf6 30.Bf5 Rc7 not much hope is left for white.] 28.Qf2 Rc7 29.Bc1! Qg7 30.Bd3! Ncd4 31.Ba3 [Bet-ter was 31.Bxg6 Qxg6 when black has only a minimum advantage.] 31...Nc5 32.Bxg6 hxg6 33.Qg2!= Suddenly white is back in reckoning with his queen poised to occupy the strategically strong d5 square. 33...f5 34.Qd5 Qe7 35.g4 Kg7? [Unhappy with the turn of events black makes a careless move taking away the king's support for his queen. Best was 35...Rc6 36.gxf5 gxf5 37.Rf2 Ke8= The game is well balanced.] 36.Bxc5 Rxc5 37.Qxd4!+- Qc7 Black is now a rook down for two pawns and should lose in a few more moves. But he has the last laugh! 38.Qd3 f4 39.Rd1! d5 [Black does not allow the invasion of his backyard which will result after: 39...Rxc4 40.Qxd6 Rc2+ 41.Kg1+-] 40.cxd5 Rc2+ 41.Rd2 Rc3 42.Qe4 Re3 43.Rc2 Qd8 44.Qb4 Kh6 [If 44...b6 45.Rfc1!] 45.g5+ Kxg5 46.Rg1+ Kh5 47.Rcg2 Diagram #

[White walks into a snap mate. He could win with: 47.Qxb7! ] 47...Rxh3+!! After 48 Kxh3, Qh4 mates against the run of play! 0–1

G a r e y e v , T i m u r ( U S A ) ( 2 6 0 5 ) Rozum,Ivan (Rus) (2595) [E11]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Bb4+ 4.Nbd2 0–0 5.a3 Be7 6.e4 d5 7.Bd3 c5 8.e5 Nfd7 9.h4 h6 10.Bb1 [H.PIlaj (2426) vs H.Hecht (2384) Solingen, 2005, went: 10.cxd5 exd5 11.b4 cxd4 12.Nb3 Nc6 13.Bf4 Re8 14.0–0 Bxh4 ....43. 0–1.] 10...Re8 [Better was to break up white's enlarged centre with: 10...cxd4 11.cxd5 exd5 12.Qc2 f5 13.Ba2 Nb6 14.Nxd4 Bd7=] 11.Ng5!? cxd4 [The knight cannot be captured: 11...hxg5? 12.Qh5 g6 13.Bxg6 fxg6 14.Qxg6+ Kf8 15.hxg5 and mates.] 12.f4 [If 12.Bh7+ Kf8 13.Nxf7 Kxf7 14.Qh5+ Kf8 15.Qf3+ Bf6 16.exf6 Qxf6³] 12...Nc6?! Diagram #

[Much better was: 12...dxc4! 13.Qh5 Rf8 14.Nh7 c3! 15.bxc3 dxc3 16.Nb3 Qb6 17.Bc2 Qc6! 18.Kf1 Rd8 19.Ng5 Qc4+ 20.Kf2 Rf8 (20...Bc5+ 21.Kg3! (21.Nxc5 Qxc5+ 22.Be3 Qe7³) 21...hxg5 22.hxg5 Kf8 23.g6! Bb6 24.gxf7+-) 21.Bh7+ Kh8 22.Bc2!=] 13.Qh5! Rf8 14.cxd5 exd5 15.0–0 Qe8 16.Ndf3 d3 [Making the way for an eventual ...Bc5+ but better was: 16...Nc5 17.Bh7+ Kh8 18.Bd2 Bxg5 19.Nxg5 Qd7 20.e6! Nxe6 21.Bf5 Ne7 22.Nxf7+ Kg8 23.Nxh6+ gxh6 24.Bh3 Ng7!–+ Black has obtained a comfortable material advantage and simplification.] 17.Bxd3 f5 18.Qxe8 Rxe8 19.Ne6 Bc5+ 20.Nxc5 Nxc5 21.Rd1 The smoke has cleared and white has emerged with a slight advantage in the endgame. 21...Nxd3?! Diagram #

[Black finds the tension too much to bear and opts for simplification, but here equal-ity was best attained by attack, like: 21...Nb3! 22.Rb1 Be6²] 22.Rxd3 After this white easily occupies the c-file and controls the game. 22...Be6 23.Be3 Rec8 [If 23...Na5 24.Nd4 Kf7 25.Nb5+-] 24.Rc1 Kf7 [If 24...b6? 25.Rdc3 Ne7 26.Rc7+-] 25.Rdc3 Ke8 26.Kf2 Kd7 27.b4 b6 [After 27...a6 28.Bb6! g6 29.Ke2 Ke8 30.Kd3 Rab8 31.Rc5± the white forces are completely tied up in knots.] 28.h5 Bf7? Diagram #

[28...Ne7 would not have lost so dramatical-ly.] 29.e6+! [Black resigns because, after 29.e6+! Bxe6 30.Rxc6! Rxc6 31.Ne5+ wins a knight.] 1–0

Puzzle of the monthBy C.G.S.Narayanan

A proof game is a type of retrograde analysis chess problem. The solver must construct a game starting from the initial chess position, which ends with a given position (thus proving that that position is reachable) after a specified number of moves. A proof game is also called a shortest proof game (SPG).In this case the task is simply to construct the shortest possible game ending with the given position. In the diagram below white and black both played six moves from the initial game array and on white’s sev-enth move the position shown is reached. The solver is required to find the sequence of moves.

Satoshi HashimotoProbleemblad 1999

Short Proof Game 6.5 moves (solution on page 48)

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Tactics from master games by S.Krishnan

1 2 White to play and win White to play and win

3 4 White to play and win White to play and win

5 6 Black to play and win Black to play and win

(solutions on p.47)

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45

KKCA 2nd All India FIDE Rated Chess Tournament (Below 1600),Coimbatore

Ganesan Memorial FIDE Rated Open Chess Tournament,Nagercoil

Captain All Bengal State Amateur FIDE Rated Tournament 2018 (Below 2000),Kolkata

Ayush Jha (Third) Rahul Krishna Viswanathan (Winner) and Ambarish Sharma (Runner-up)

Masters of the past-85 Arnold DenkerArnold Sheldon Denker (February 20, 1914 – January 2, 2005) was an American chess player, Grandmaster, and chess author. He was U.S. Chess Champion in 1944 and 1946.In later years he served in various chess organizations, receiving recognition from the United States Chess Federation, including in 2004 the highest honor, "Dean of American Chess".

Denker was born on February 20, 1914 in the Bronx, New York City, in an orthodox Jewish family. According to Denker himself, he learned chess in 1923 watching his elder brothers play.He first gained attention in chess by winning the New York City individual interscholastic championship in 1929 at age 15. In the next decade he established himself as a leading rival to Samuel Reshevsky, Reuben Fine, and Isaac Kashdan as the strongest U.S. chess player. His first really strong international

event was Syracuse, New York 1934, where Reshevsky won convincingly, with Denker placing just behind him.

In 1940 Denker won the first of his six Manhattan Chess Club championships. He became U.S. Championin 1944, winning fourteen games (including one against Fine), drawing three, and losing none. Denker called his win over Fine from this event 'the game of my life'. (This 91 percent score was the best winning percentage in U.S. Championship history until Bobby Fischer scored 11–0 in 1963–64.) Denker successfully defended his U.S. title in a 1946 challenge match against Herman Steiner, winning 6–4 at Los Angeles. He became an International Master in 1950 (the year the title was first awarded by FIDE).

During World War II Denker played exhibitions at army bases and aboard aircraft carriers. In 1945, as U.S. champion, he played on board one in the USA vs USSR radio match, losing both games to Mikhail Botvinnik, and in 1946 travelled to Moscow for the return match, losing both games against Vasily Smyslov. Also in 1946, he played at the very strong Groningen tournament, the first major event following World War II, scoring 9.5 out of 19 and securing draws against Botvinnik and Smys-lov, and losing after achieving a winning position against Max Euwe.

In 1947 Denker produced an autobiographical game collection in his book: If You Must Play Chess.Denker was never a full-time professional player. His peak results were scored from 1940 to 1947, in U.S. Championships and on his trips to Europe for tournaments at London, Hastings and Groningen. International ratings were introduced by FIDE only in 1970, more than a generation after Denker's best years. The website chessmetrics.com rates players retrospectively using modern algorithms, and places Denker as high as 27th in the world in the mid 1940s, but this site is missing several of Denker's most important results.

In 1981 FIDE made Denker an honorary Grandmaster. In later years, he was an important chess organizer, serving on the boards of the American Chess Foundation, the United States Chess Fed-eration(USCF), and the U.S. Chess Trust He wrote many chess articles and in 1995 the book: The Bobby Fischer I Knew and Other Stories (co-authored by Larry Parr; Hypermodern Press).

In 1992 Denker was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame. He received America’s highest chess honor on June 11, 2004 when he became only the third person to be proclaimed "Dean of American Chess" by the USCF.

A graduate of New York University, he married the former Nina Simmons in 1936, a marriage last-ing 57 years until her death in 1993. They had three children: Richard, Mitchell and Randie.Denker died of brain cancer on January 2, 2005 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Courtesy:Wikipedia

Mrs.Jayalaksmi, Mrs.Vinodhini Santhosh, Mr. Santhosh, MD, BMN Kalyana Mandabam,Kathiravan, Winner, Mr.Mohamed Yousuff, Joint Secretary, CDCA, Mr. V Vijayaraghavan, Secretary, CDCA Mr. Krishnamurthy President, KKCA presenting the trophy

Winner International Master R.Balasubramanian receiving

the trophy from the Chief Guest Kulathooran Pillai, President,

KKDCA. Mr. Ephrame, Joint-Secretary of TNSCA,and Chief

Arbiter,A.F.Rex, Secretary, KKDCA are also seen

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4th Teekay FIDE Rated Chess Tournament,Thoothukudi

IIFL 3RD Mumbai Open International Grandmaster Tournament, Mumbai

Solutions to ‘Tactics from master games’ on page 421. Xiang,Zeyu (2395) Lin,Yi (2364) [B40]Shenzhen CHN Shenzhen CHN (6.14), 08.12.2017White to play. 17.Ne4! Qxe4 [17...Nf5 18.g4+- Qxe4 19.Qd7+ Kf8 20.Qxc8+ Wins.; 17...0–0 18.Nd6+-; 17...Qd5 18.Nd6++-] 18.Qd7+ Kf8 19.Qd8+ [19.Qd8+ Rxd8 20.Rxd8#] 1–0

2. Plat,V (2567) Szadkowski,Kr (2138) [B02]European Rapid 2017 Katowice POL (2.28), 16.12.2017White to play. 25.g4!! Qxf4 26.Nf6+ [26.Nf6+ gxf6 (26...Qxf6 27.Qe8+ Rxe8 28.Rxe8#) 27.Qxf4+-] 1–0

3. Dobrowolski,P (2421) Saric,A (2540) [B01]European Blitz 2017 Katowice POL (9.21), 15.12.2017White to play 11.Ne5!+- e6 [11...Qc8 12.Bxd5+-; 11...Qd6 12.Nxg4+-; 11...Bxd1 12.Ba4+ c6 13.Bxc6+ Qd7 14.Bxd7+ Kd8 15.Bc6+-] 12.Ba4+ Ke7 13.Nc6+ Kf6 14.Qxg4 Qd6 15.d4+- 1–0

4. Andersson,Fred2 (2280) Morling,-Joakim (2054) [C11]Malmo Open 2017 Malmo SWE (6.7), 16.12.2017White to play 27.Rxe4! dxe4 28.Nc6 Rb8 [28...g5 29.Nxb4+-] 29.Nxb8 f5 30.Rd8+ Kf7 31.Rd7+ Ke8 [31...Rxd7 32.Nxd7 e3 33.Nc5 e2 34.Nd3+-] 32.Rxc7 e3 33.Rc3 1–0

5. Aczel,G (2549)Indjic,A (2611) [A65]Dr Geza Hetenyi Mem GM Budapest HUN (8.1), 20.12.2017Black to play. 33...Rxb2! 34.Rxb2 Qxh3+! 35.Kg1 [35.gxh3 Be5#] 35...Bd4+ 36.Qf2 [36.Kf1 Qxh1#] 36...Qxf3 [36...Qxf3 37.Kf1

Qxc3–+] 0–1

6. Bednarek,S (2307) Heberla,B (2555) [A40]European Blitz 2017 Katowice POL (5.40), 15.12.2017Black to play. 19...Rc2+! 20.Kxc2 [20.Kd3 Bf5+ 21.Kd4 Rd8 Threatening 22....Ng7-23 ...ne6 mate 22.Bd2 a) 22.Bg5 Ndf6+ 23.Ke3 Ng4+ 24.Kf3 Rf2#; b) 22.Bc4 Ng7 23.Kc5 Rc8+ 24.Kxd5 R2xc4 25.Bd4 (25.Nc5 Be6+ 26.Nxe6 fxe6#; 25.Rd4 e6+ 26.Kd6 R4c7 27.... Ne8 # cannot be prevented.) 25...e6+ 26.Kd6 Ne8+ 27.Kd7 R4c7#; 22...Ng7 23.Nc5 b6 24.Ne4 Nc3+ Wins] 20...Nxe3+ 21.Kd2 Nxd1 22.Kxd1 Bd5–+ 0–1

Solutions to ‘Test your endgame’ on page 431.Kuznetsov & Saharow 19611.Ne5 Be6 2.Nc5 Bc8 3.Nc4 Kg6 4.Nd3 Be6 5.Nce5+ Kg7 6.Nxc1 1…..Be8 2.Nd6 Bg6 3.Nec4 Bh7 4.Ne8 Kg6 5.Ne5+ Kh5 6.Nf6#

2. Tjavslowski 19601.Kb8 Bxg4 2.Kb7 d4 3.Kc6 Kg3 4.Kd6 Kh4 5.Ke7 Bc8 6.Kd8 Bg4 7.Nd3 Bf5 8.Ne5 Kh5 9.Ke7 Bc8 10.Ke8 Bf5 11.Kd8 Kxg5 12.Nf3+ Kf4 13.Nxd4 Bh3 14.Nc6 g5 15.Nb8 g4 16.Nd7 wins

3.Cehover 19591.Qf8 Nf5 2.Qa3 Ne3 3.Qa8 Nd5 4.Qf8 Nf4 5.Qa3 Nd3 6.Qa8 wins

4.Guljajev & Koroljkov1.e4 Bxe4 2.Rf3+ Bxf3 3.Rg8+ Kf7 4.Rg7+ Kf8 5.g6 Bxd5 6.Rf7+ Bxf7 7.g7#

5.Gurvic 19601.Nf7+ Kxb7 2.Be4 Rh1+ 3.Kg7 Rg1+ 4.Kf8 Rxg8+ 5.Kxg8 Kc6 6.Bf3 Qxf3 7.Ne5+ wins6.A.Grin 19611.Qe4 Bc6+ 2.Qxc6 b1Q 3.g6 Qh1 4.Qxh1 a4 5.Qh6

Shri.S. Natarajan, Deputy Chairman, VOC Port Trust,and Mr. Manuel Aaron, India’s 1st International Master and Arjuna Award winner inaugurating the tournament. Oth-ers in the picture: Prof.R.Anantharam,In-ternational Arbiter, Chief Arbiter of the tournament, Prof.T.Karpagavalli,Secretary of Teekay chess Centre, P.S.S.G.Thivakar, Vice President, Teekay Chess centre

(L-R).Suresh S.P.Patel, Chief Engineer,VOC Port Trust, K.Ravikumar, Deputy Chief Engi-neer, VOC Port Trust, Cap.Bhabatesh Chand, Deputy Conservator, VOC Port Trust, Dr.S.Va-seekaran,President, Teekay chess centre, Shri.S.Natarajan,Deputy Chairman, VOC Port Trust,Dr.J Mohanraj, Vice-President, Thoo-thukudi District Chess Association, M.Kunal, Winner,Prof.R.Anantharam IA, Chief Arbiter, U.Rajendran,Traffic Manager, VOC Port Trust,-Prof.T.Karpagavalli,Secretary, Teekay chess Centre.

Maghsoodloo Parhan of Iran, Open Champion and Gukesh Anand,Under-13 Champion with Five-time World Cham-pion GM Vishy Anand

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Tariff for adverTisemenT :

Back Cover (Colour)Inside Cover (Colour)Full Page Inside (Colour)Full Page Inside (Black & White)Half Page Inside (Black & White)

Monthly (in Rs.)

15,00015,000 7,000 5,000 3,000

Annual (in Rs.)

1,20,0001,00,000

60,000 45,000 30,000

49

Solution to puzzle of the month on p.41:1.e3 Nf6 2.e4 2.Nxe4 3.Na3 Nc3 4.Rb1 Nb1 5.Nb5 Na3 6.Nc3 Nc4 7.Nb1

Title Date Location1st Sri Anand Wings Open FIDE Rating 16 Feb - 19 Feb Guntur Shri Dakshinamurthy FIDE Rating below 1500 23 Feb - 25 Feb Tindivanam 4th Kanyakumari FIDE Rated below 1500 23 Feb - 25 Feb Nagercoil BPS All Goa Open Rapid FIDE Rating 24 Feb - 25 Feb Goa 2nd Dalmia Cements All India Open FIDE Rating 26 Mar - 31 Mar Ranchi KCA 16th Open FIDE Rating 29 Mar - 01 Apr Kottayam 2nd Holi Cup Lakecity open FIDE Rating 29 Mar - 01 Apr Udaipur Asian Youth Ch’ships U 8,10,12,14,16 and 18 31 Mar - 10 Apr Chiangmai Thailand 1st TCS FIDE Rated open 02 Apr - 07 Apr Hisar,Haryana 3rd Don Bosco FIDE Rated 07 Apr - 10 Apr Irinjalakuda,KL 2nd Sri Anand Wings Open FIDE Rating 1500 13 Apr - 15 Apr Guntur Karnataka State Rated Open Championship 14 Apr - 18 Apr Koramangala 2nd Sardar Prakash Singh Memorial FIDE Rated 17 Apr - 22 Apr Sonipat, Haryana 1st ARMS Open Rapid FIDE Rating 21 Apr - 22 Apr Thane TN State Open Chess Championship 26 Apr - 30 Apr Dharmapuri 4 Queens 1st open FIDE Chess Tournament 28 Apr - 01 May Ernakulam 1st IGMSA All India Open FIDE Rating Tmt 29 Apr - 04 May Secunderabad, Telangana National Rapid and blitz 2018 02 May - 06 May Ahmedabad,Gujarat KCA 17th below 1400 FIDE Rating 04 May - 06 May Kottayam Late Bharatbai Halkude Mem.st FIDE Rating 05 May - 10 May Pune 2nd IGMSA All India Tournament Below 1500 05 May - 07 May Secunderabad, Telanga Chess in Lakecity FIDE Rating below 1700 08 May - 10 May Udaipur, Late Bharatbai Halkude Mem FIDE Rating 1600 11 May - 13 May Pune TN State Under - 11 Open & Girls - 2018 11 May - 15 May KanchipuramKasparov below 1600 FIDE Rated 12 May - 14 May ThrissurKolkata Intl.Grandmaster Open tournament 14 May - 22 May KolkataTN State Under - 17 Open & Girls - 2018 16 May - 20 May NagercoilOdisha Open GM Chess Tmt 2018 24 May -31 May Bhubaneshwar

AICF Calendar February 2018

The top three winners of the C group were Anirudh Jain (centre), Devi Das Suresh Pai (right) and Ravindra P

Playing Hall

16th Delhi International Open Grandmasters Tournament, New Delhi

Top three winners of the tournament with Bharat Singh Chauhan - Arkadij Naiditsch (centre), Ziaur Rahman (left) and Md Nubairshah Shaikh

Subhra Saha,Winner Group B, receiving the trophy from Bharat Singh Chouhan,Secretary,AICF