MCL 2016: Where chess meets fun!

The fourth edition of the Maharashtra Chess League (MCL), the only professional league of India, is being held from June 11 -15, 2016 at the PYC Hindu Gymkhana, Pune. The six-team event with six players a side will be a rapid tournament (25mins + 10 sec increment) where the teams initially play a round-robin followed by a knockout between four teams to decide the winners.

The title sponsor of the event is the Persistent Systems, a technology services company with a revenue of US $ 308 Million in 2014-15, and supported by de Asra Foundation, an entrepreneurship consultancy company, with the support of Amanora Knowledge Foundation, Pune. The Tournament has been a brainchild of Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte and Aniruddha Deshpande, President of the Pune District Chess Circle.

As the first stage of the event, the auctions to select the players for each team was held at Amanora Park Town, Pune on the 21^st of May 2016.

Vishy Anand has been the Brand Ambassador of the event since its inception, and the auction of the event was held at the Amanora parktown, Pune in his presence.

Six teams from various cities of Maharashtra participating in the league are: Jalgaon Battlers (owned by Jain Irrigation Systems Pvt. Ltd.), Thane Combatants (MEP Infrastructures), RBS Ahmednagar Checkers (RBS SportsEthix), Mumbai Movers (Shri Hari Extrusion Limited) and Pune Tru Masters (Tru Space), and the new team of Pune Sangli Nok 99 Navigators (Co-owned by Sujanil Chemo Industries, Chitale Dairy and iLEAD Chess Academy).

Prior to the auctions, the owners and the players were given the option of opting to retain / be retained with the previous players / owners on mutual consent, with an increase of 10% from the previous year’s purse, and 20% in case the player had ‘jumped’ categories, e.g IM to GM, become a WGM etc. 

Being the fourth year, the MCL Auction has become a highly contested affair itself, with all the team owners (assisted by coaches of the teams who are decent chess players themselves!) approaching the event with careful strategies, as the whole team has to be picked within a budget of Rs.450,000, including the retainership fees.

Rules of the event made the bidding of the players tricky. Though it is technically a league for the state of Maharashtra, practically the best players of the country participate. The registered players for the event literally was a who’s who of Indian chess, with 16 GMs, 22 IMs and 8 WGMs among the total 78 to choose from. Every team have to field at least three players from Mahrashtra in each round (which makes the players of Maharashtra very much in demand). It is also necessary to have two women players playing out of the six and each team must have at least a GM, a WGM, an IM, an under-16 player in their ranks.

The second quirk of the bidding process being, the auction being scheduled in two rounds with a break in between. The logic being, the teams could skip any player who was offered in the first round (in case they had any other ‘target’ in mind), but bid for him again in the 2^nd round. Thus, the teams approached the event with clear strategies which showed as the auction progressed, which was covered with Live text commentary at the official website.

The bidding started with the grandmasters, and teams pointedly ignored all the offers to fight it out except for the 2600+ GMs – Sasikiran, Adhiban and Abhijeet Gupta. ‘Sasi’ was expectedly fought very hard for between RBS Ahmednagar Checkers and Thane Combatants, and Checkers finally pocketed him for a whopping Rs.170,000 (US$ 2225 Appr.), thus becoming the priciest player ever in MCL, beating Koneru Humpy’s record from the previous year of Rs.150,000.

Contacted for a quote on becoming the costliest ever of the MCL, Sasi decided to keep it low-key with a simple, “Hoping to play some good quality chess”, unlike his predecessors Abhijit Kunte (“It is a very heady realisation that you are the costliest in this hall!” in 2014) and Koneru Humpy (“A really nice feeling!”)

But as all strategies go, there were many surprises and disappointments too. GM Lalithbabu was picked up for a relatively low price of Rs.65,000 in the very first round by Thane Combatants, as the other teams skipped the sub-2600 GMs in the first round.

Since only twelve men Grandmasters were eventually picked, with each team having two of them, two of the strangest omissions were the young National Champion Murali Karthikeyan, and M.R.Venkatesh - a strong rapid player who won the best player award of the first year of MCL with a score of 7.0/7.

But the biggest surprises happened in the distaff side. Humpy Koneru was expected to better her previous year’s demand but was picked up for a price of Rs.138,000 (Rs. 12,000 less than previous year) by Jalgaon Battlers.

Since players of Maharashtra and women players being in demand, those who fulfilled both the criteria were paid really well. IM Eesha Karavade thus enjoyed her rarity and was picked up for a whopping Rs.158,000/- by Pune TruMasters.

Another surprise came up when WGM Padmini Rout was aggressively pursued and finally bought for Rs.161,000 (more than Humpy!) by Thane Combatants, even though Padmini doesn’t belong to Maharashtra. But probably, her two best woman player awards in the previous MCL editions helped…

One of the most heartening gestures came from Rishi Gupta, owner of Mumbai Movers, as he suddenly requested that the bidding price of young and upcoming R.Vaishali of Tamilnadu be hiked and bought for Rs.103,000, and refused any explanation when contacted for quote, but making obvious his magnanimous gesture with the act.

And this edition of MCL has brought out palace intrigues to the fore, literally! Rishi Gupta’s wife, Hemangi Gupta runs a chess Academy – ‘iLead Chess Academy’, and has become the co-owner of the new team this year – Pune Sangli Nok99 Navigators. Thus, the husband-wife duo owning different teams, we are set to witness family battles being fought on 64 squares and six boards in a large hall in a posh club of Pune shortly! A prelude of things to come indicated itself when their daughter 12 year old Ananya Rishi Gupta (rated 1842) was briefly bidded between the couple and picked up by the mother’s team!

In the second round, one of the biggest stars of MCL 2015, young GM Aravindh Chithambaram was once again picked up by Thane Combatants, the defending champions, for Rs.85,000.

The best feature of the league is to enable young talents of the state to mingle with the best of the stars of the country, thus enabling the aims of the leagues to be fulfilled.

Thus, as the dust settled, this is how the teams have been formed:

1. Ahmednagar Checkers

2. Thane Combatants

3. Pune TruMasters

4. Pune Sangli Navigators

5. Mumbai Movers

6. Jalgaon Battlers

Of course, MCL is not just about the chess competition. The five day event creates so much energy and frolic that, it has been christened and denoted by the tagline ‘where chess meets fun’. For example, in the previous year, the best dug-out design for the teams was given out a special prize which went to Pune TruMasters, with a unique concept.

After the auction, Vishy Anand gave an hour-long lecture on, ‘Checkmate – journey through vagaries of life and career’, espousing strategies for his success. The evening’s event was sponsored by IIFL – Private Wealth Management, and was an excellently organized event.

Anand’s lecture almost was a down-the-memory lane recollections by the Indian legend:

• Started his journey at the age of 6 where his mother played the most vital role in his chess as she would make notes on the puzzles that were hosted on television in Philippines, and the encouragement she offered all through
• He was always attracted towards chess on his own
• His Chess strength grew along with accumulation of various perspectives. While facing Karpov in the Candidates 1991, Gurevich made a point about his opponent - that Karpov does not make his own ideas but only stops those of his opponents – a valuable insight at that point

• Pattern recognition is the way one masters any field. Mastery and recollection of positions aides one’s decision making. Most of the strongest players have have photographic memories.
• Arrival of computers changed mastering various skills for players. As his generation was introduced to chess through books, it is all about computer for the current generation where chess is faster and demands more computer skills, which the elder generations struggle with.
• After using computers even he doesn't want to go back to books. After reading a book nowadays he wants to go back and check them with a computer.
• In the 2013 match against Carlsen, he had missed one key element. That computers had grown in strength and thus it was difficult to come up with new ideas. So the situation gave much more room for a typical stylist to assert himself over the board
• When he was young he went around tourist spots and came much fresher to the board
• Fitness is not only important for chess but also an important regime which one must follow

The event would feature extensive coverage and live game telecast at the official website: http://maharashtrachessleague.com/, Twitter: twitter.com/MCL_CIS and Facebook: www.facebook.com/MAHChessLeague. ChessBase India will be covering the event extensively with round by round reports and Priydarshan Banjan being present at the venue.

With thanks to contributions from Manisha Mohite, Hemangi Gupta and Akshat Khamparia

About the Author

Venkatachalam Saravanan performs multiple tasks at the MCL. He is the comperer and keeps the show going with his humour and lively interviews. He also takes care of the reporting and maintains the social media presence of the event. He is an International Master and has been an active chess player in the Indian circuit, and has been consistently writing on chess since late 1980s. He turned complete chess professional in 2012, actively playing and being a second and a trainer to a handful of Indian players. He reports on chess tournaments, occasionally being a correspondent to national newspapers and news channels. Apart from chess, he is also interested in Tamil and English literature, music and photography.