FIDE World Cup 2017: The super seven Indians!

03/09/2017 -

Seven Indians have reached Tbilisi, Georgia to fight for the two spots at the World Cup 2017. After a long time we will see Vishy Anand and Pentala Harikrishna participating in the same event. The new entrant in 2700+ group Vidit Gujrathi will be looking to prove himself here and so would the FIDE President's wild card nomination Adhiban Baskaran. Sethuraman would like to keep up his form of 2015 World Cup, while Karthikeyan Murali and Deep Sengupta will try and send as many higher rated opponents back home packing as possible. Here's an article that familiarizes you with the chances that Indian players have. 

First Friday IM norm tournament to begin in Malaysia

02/09/2017 -

The First Saturday tournaments in Budapest, Hungary have been highly successful. A lot of top players have made their IM and GM norms over there, most famous being Fabiano Caruana. But there was nothing of that sort in Asia where players from India and the surrounding countries could play in a Round Robin event and fight for their norms. Now, Peter Long's Institute of Chess Excellence along with Malaysian Chess Federation has organized the First Friday Round Robin IM norm tournament from 6th to 11th of October in Kuala Lumpur. Here are all the details. 

408 players at Akshayakalpa children's chess league

02/09/2017 -

"When I first entered the chess arena in Bangalore in 1992, we used to have 50 entries in a tournament," writes Sushrutha Reddy. "The winner always used to be an adult and state tournaments had very less participants." All of this began to change as like minded people like Reddy and other coaches implemented the chess in schools project in the city of Bangalore. Chess started to flourish in the city and a glorious example of this is the Akshayakalpa Children's Chess League held on 13th of August 2017 with 408 participants. A report on this mammoth event. 

Abu Dhabi Chess Festival: Norms, titles and more!

01/09/2017 -

The capital city of UAE, Abu Dhabi, hosted a spectacular chess festival from 13th to 23rd August 2017. The fest featured six events which cumulatively attracted more than 350 participants. And guess what? More than 150 of them were from India! With so many Indians in the fray, it was natural to expect some big results for our country. And our players didn't disappoint. Four out of the seven norms achieved at the Master's section of the tournament were earned by Indians. Besides, GM Shardul Gagare finished third at the ultra strong blitz event of the festival while Amardeep Bartakke and his son Aditya clinched the title prize in the Family Tournament! Here's a report with pictures. 

Karnataka is 1.7 Elo points away from getting its first GM

31/08/2017 -

Recently we published an article entitled "Who will be India's 50th grandmaster?" In it we made a strong prediction that IM M.S. Thejkumar has the best chances to become India's 50th and Karnataka's first grandmaster. He recently won the 8th Kandy Open in Sri Lanka and gained valuable 6.40 Elo points. He took his tally to 2498.3 and is now just 1.7 Elo points away from the GM title. A short report on the event by C.K. Muralidharan. 

A day at the ChessBase office in Hamburg

31/08/2017 -

We have all seen companies, how they function, how people work there, the nine to five job, the daily drab work with the papers and numbers! Well, what if there is a chess company with people in there working on chess. Your favourite game! What if instead of papers you have chess boards and pieces and DVDs and interesting puzzles littered all around you! Yes, it's a dreamworld for every chess lover and it does exist at Osterbekstraße 90A, 22083 Hamburg. Come, let's have a look at the ChessBase headquarters in Germany.

No Arjuna award for Indian chess players

31/08/2017 -

Indian chess is booming and we have some amazing achievements by our top players over the years. The Arjuna award is given to sports players for their outstanding achievement in national sports. Anand, Harikrishna, Ganguly, Sasikiran and many other top players have received the Arjuna Award in the past. However, three of our brightest talents - Vidit Gujrathi, B. Adhiban and S.P. Sethuraman have had some phenomenal achievements to their credit in the past year and they surely deserved the award. No Arjuna for chess players - that's pretty disheartening.

National Challengers round 12: Deepan and Swapnil to battle for the title!

31/08/2017 -

Going into the penultimate round, Deepan Chakkravarthy annihilated Himanshu Sharma's king in a Sicilian Paulsen. With this win, he has not only moved to the sole second spot but has also earned the right to fight for the title prize against tournament leader Swapnil Dhopade in the final round. On board 3, GM RR Laxman gave his opponent no chance, consuming only 52 mins for the entire game. In the final round, twelve players will be fighting for the nine qualification spots into the National Premier Championship and two for the title prize. An exciting finale is on the cards! 

Badalona - The Final Destination in Catalan circuit!

31/08/2017 -

The Indian contingent completed its 53-day-long Spain Trip with the Badalona Open. At this event too, Indians made their presence felt. While IM P Iniyan made his mark by finishing joint third at the event, GM Himanshu Sharma finished among the top 10 after some fumbles in the middle of the tournament. Not only that, a lot of young Indian talents pulled out a remarkable show. Here's a report with games and impressions from the lively city of Barcelona! 

Vidit the immovable object has become an unstoppable force

30/08/2017 -

Reaching Elo 2700 is a big milestone for a chess player. Many GMs might even kill to reach the feat. India's Vidit Gujrathi had been lurking around this much-revered rating mark for quite a while. He came close, drifted away, but kept chasing. And in the end, on August 20, 2017, he finally barged into the 2700 club with a bang. At the Spanish Higher League, playing for team Solvay, he scored an unbeaten 4.5/7 beating Alexander Areshchenko in the final round to catapult his rating to 2701.7. The fact that only three Indians had been able to achieve this mark speaks volumes about this achievement.

Chess Camp by Rakesh Kulkarni at the Hangouts Place, Pune

29/08/2017 -

Pratik Mulay, a sub-2000 rated player from Pune, came up with an excellent idea to hang out with his chess friends while learning the game at the same time. He set up a place for all chess players to hang out, play weekend tournaments and learn the game at a snooker parlor in his locality. As the place's popularity grew, Pratik collaborated with IM elect Rakesh Kulkarni and organized a chess camp to help everyone who is keen to learn the game. Here's a peek into what happened there.

World Cadets 2017: Travelling 9000 miles in quest for gold!

28/08/2017 - Pocos de Caldas is nearly 9000 miles away from India. Yet, 20 Indians are fighting out there at the World Cadets (under-8,10,12) 2017. It's this passion for the game and the will to excel and bring back medals for the country, that is pushing India to become a superpower in the world of chess. These youngsters are the future of Indian chess and three of them are leading at the halfway mark: Dev Shah in under 10, Shivika Rohila in under-10 girls and Divya Deshmukh in under-12 girls. Praful Zaveri is with the delegation in Brazil and sends us a beautiful report from Brazil.

A candid conversation with GM Deepan Chakkravarthy

28/08/2017 - The National Challengers 2017 was a thrilling affair. GM Swapnil Dhopade was leading the event almost all the way through. But just then, in came GM Deepan Chakkravarthy who beat all odds and clinched the title by winning five straight games! To talk about this sensational performance, ChessBase India's Aditya Pai caught up with Deepan. In this interview, Deepan not only speaks about the nail-biting finish at the National Challengers but also analyses his final round game and gives insights into his life and chess in general.

 

Asian Cities kicks of in KIIT, Bhubaneshwar

27/08/2017 -

Asian Cities 2017 is being held in the Kalinga Institute Campus, Bhubaneshwar from the 26th of August to 1st of September 2017. Rasht from Iran is the top seed with the local KIIT team being the second seeds. Twelve teams are taking part in this event. Five teams are from India: KIIT, Bhubaneshwar,  Kolkata, Puri, Cuttack and Bhubaneshwar, while we have six International teams from Iran, UAE, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Oman, Palestine and Chinese Taipei. We have round one report.

The Champion from Chudamani: IM Sidhant Mohapatra

27/08/2017 -

170 km away from the capital city Bhubaneshwar, Odisha is a small village called Chudamani. This is where a talented lad, and India's latest International Master is from. There was absolutely no chess culture at that place, but Sidhant Mohapatra braved all the odds and made a name for himself in the chess world. ChessBase India's youngest author Avathanshu Bhat caught up with him and did an interview. We present it now to you and this will help you to get to know the champion from Chudamani better.