After a five-year pause, the Mumbai International Chess Tournament is back with the support of Aurionpro Solutions Limited. The event is set to take place from June 16-24, 2025, at the prestigious World Trade Centre, Mumbai. It will feature two major tournaments: the Aurionpro Mumbai International Grandmaster Chess Tournament (₹25 Lakhs) and the Aurionpro Mumbai Junior International Chess Tournament (₹15 Lakhs). This is going to be the richest junior chess event in the world! Check out the article for more details.

IM Vikramaditya Kulkarni scored an unbeaten 6.5/7 to win 360 One Wealth GP Series 3 Rating Open 2024. The top seed of the tournament finished a half point ahead of the competition. Despite a second draw against 9-year-old Reyaansh Venkat, Vikramaditya won the next five games consecutively to become the champion. Four players - Arnav Mahesh Koli, Sanjeev Mishra, Amardeep S Bartakke and Yash Kapadi scored 6/7 each. They were placed second to fifth respectively according to tie-breaks. The total prize fund of the tournament was ₹250000. The top three prizes were ₹50000 + trophy, ₹30000 and ₹25000 each. This was Vikramaditya's first tournament triumph of 2024. The final leg of the GP series will start on 11th March 2024 . It will also be another Open event. Photos: FT IA IO Praful Zaveri/Indian Chess School

Guru Prakash, Atharv Soni and Darsh Shetty scored 6/7 at 360 One Wealth Junior Under-15 GP Series 2 Rating 2023. Guru won the tournament due to better tie-break score. Atharv and Darsh were placed second and third. Guru drew against the eventual second runner-up, Darsh in the final round. The total prize fund of the tournament was ₹250000. The top three prizes were ₹50000 + trophy, ₹30000 and ₹25000 each. This was Guru's third tournament triumph of 2023. It is also his first-ever rating tournament victory of his career. The third event of the GP series will start on 5th February 2024. It will be an Open event instead of restricted to Under-15 players. Photos: FT IA IO Praful Zaveri/Indian Chess School

Ram Vishal Parab scored an unbeaten 6.5/7 to win 360 One Wealth Junior Under-15 GP Series 1 Rating 2023. He finished a half point ahead of the competition. Arvind Iyer, Arnav Mahesh Koli and Paras Dilip Bhoir scored 6/7 each. They secured second, third and fourth place respectively according to tie-breaks. Ram defeated the eventual second runner-up Arnav in the sixth round. The total prize fund of the tournament was ₹250000. The top three prizes were ₹50000 + trophy, ₹30000 and ₹25000 each. This was Ram Vishal's seveth tournament triumph of the year. It is also his first-ever rating tournament victory of his career. Photos: FT IA IO Praful Zaveri/Indian Chess School

Praful Zaveri is someone who is relentlessly working towards the growth of chess in Mumbai and India. He is the author of the best-selling book for beginners Chess Course. He is also the organizer of the famous IIFLW chess tournament which has helped many young talents in their career. Staying true to his nature of working on meaningful and chess empowering projects, he has launched the Russian Chess Academy in Mumbai. How did this project come into fruition? Read Praful's story of opening a chess Academy of his dreams.

We are on the threshold of season 7 of 360 ONE (formerly, IIFL Wealth) Mumbai International Chess Festival. The festival comprises two events: Open & Junior (Under-13). While the staging of ‘Open’ event is common & understood, lots of questions were raised as regards to U13 – why an Under-13 event? What purpose will it serve? We get answers to these questions from none other than Praful Zaveri - the brainchild of this event! The first of this article is the flashback leading to the birth of this tournament (penned by him in 2016) while the 2 nd part will answer as to what it has achieved during the past 6-seasons!

The sixth season of IIFL Wealth Mumbai International Open and Junior (Under-13) Chess Tournament started yesterday at the World Trade Center. The gala tournament of Mumbai is back after skipping the last year due to Covid-19 pandemic. The total prize fund of the tournament is ₹ 5 lacs, ₹2.5 lacs each in Open and Junior section. The tournament director IO FA FT Praful Zaveri whose brainchild is this event, decided to take baby steps and instead of going for five-six events and make it a chess festival like we have seen in previous editions, he decided to go for Open and Under-13 event only. Photo: Praful Zaveri

In 1999, a chess trainer in Mumbai decided to publish a book on learning chess basics, based on his experience of teaching young kids. He named the book "The Chess Course". Little did Praful Zaveri know that he had created a book which would sell more than 100,000 copies! If you are beginning out in chess, The Chess Course is all that you need! It's been two decades since the book has been released, but Praful's relentless aim for precision forced him to make a huge revision to the book. From 250 pages, the book now has 450 pages. It can help a beginner who has no idea of how chess works reach a level of around 1200-1500 Elo.

Turup (Checkmate) is a movie released in 2017. It's a story of three women who fight caste, religion and patriarchy in the midst of a community chess tournament played by men. The game of chess has been used on such a wide scale in the movie, that this movie deserves to be seen by every chess lover out there. FI Praful Zaveri, the author of this article, saw the movie just a week ago, and was so enamoured by it that he viewed it five times. He finally picked up his pen and wrote this review. In this review, you will also find the entire movie that can be viewed freely. Praful Zaveri has also launched a contest where the winner gets his Chess Course Books worth Rs.3499/-

This new year, if you are a chess player, you have to celebrate it in Mumbai! The IIFL Wealth Chess is back. This time it's the fifth edition and it is bigger and better than ever before. The total prize fund of all the events combined is Rs.50 lakh! For the first time in many years we will witness a GM Open in India with a rating cut off of 2250 and above! In the under-13 Juniors section, the winner will take back home a whopping prize fund of Rs.2,50,000. There is also a Masters Open (2250 and below) and a Challengers Open (2150 and below). Finally we have a blitz event open for all with a prize fund of Rs.2 lakh. In this article you will get all the information about this mega event!

A major way to make chess popular in the country is to introduce it in schools. The Chess in Schools (CIS) project has been one of AICF's priority for many years. However, there has not been an appropriate strategy taken by the national chess federation to roll out the CIS program for the entire nation. With the International Chess in Education Conference (ICEC) held in Delhi on 7th and 8th of September, AICF would like to change this situation. Apart from some of the most well known trainers of the country and state secretaries being present, two Armenian maestros Smbat Lputian and Vahan Sargsyan were also invited. Armenia is an epitome when it comes to CIS project implementation. Indian chess stakeholders learnt from their experience on day one of the conference.

Everyone loves to play blitz! But two guys from Himachal Pradesh Hansraj Thakur and Hitesh Azad decided to take this a notch higher. They played non stop blitz for 53 hours, 17 minutes and 49 seconds and 303 games to create a world record for the longest period of playing non stop blitz chess games. They bettered the total time of Jacek Gajewski and Wojciech Waruga who had played a total of 514 blitz games in 50 hours. Hansraj and Hitesh sat across each other in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh and played chess for over 53 hours as a part of endeavour to spread awareness about the upcoming Loksabha elections in the country. In this article FI Praful Zaveri tells us all about this new world record. We also have all the 303 encounters, just in case you would like to check the quality of the games.