The secret tournament of India - 31st Inter-unit PSPB poised for an exciting finish

Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) Inter-unit chess team event is the strongest tournament taking place on Indian soil. However, there is not much of media coverage around it. Most of the top players of Indian chess including Vidit, Harikrishna, Adhiban, Humpy, Abhijeet Gupta, Surya Ganguly, the list is huge, are employed by the oil companies of India. The oil companies include Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum (BPCL) and so on.

At crucial junctures in their chess careers, most of the top chess players of India got employed with the different Oil companies of India. These are Government companies and improving the sports culture of the country was one of the aims of all of these massive organizations. The players receive a salary each month for playing chess, and they do not have to go to office or work for it. This kind of support has helped Indian chess blossom over the years. While the oil companies do so much for their chess employees, what is it that they ask in return? One of the most important things they expect is for their player to play for their team at the Inter-Unit PSPB meet each year. The question is, why is this event so important? Well, you can consider this like the Olympics, with each oil company being a country! The teams in each sporting discipline try to play their best and their performance - the medal that they win, goes towards the overall tally of points that the oil company scores. So a victory in chess world mean, say 50 points for team ONGC, or IOCL or BPCL in the overall standings. At the end of the year a winner is found. Over the years this has become a matter of prestige and one of the key reasons to recruit strong players in their organization is so that the team would win the Inter-unit PSPB Championship!

This year the 31st inter-unit PSPB championships 2022 are being held at the Acres Club in Mumbai. Vidit and Harikrishna were unable to participate as they were at the FIDE Grand Prix 2022. But apart from them just about everyone is here. Have a look at this impressive starting list:

It's always a three way race!

In the second round of the tournament, the first big clash occurred. BPCL was pitted against ONGC. Abhijeet Gupta and Gopal managed to score for the team which resulted in 2.5-1.5 victory for the team of BPCL over ONGC.

While BPCL were cruising ahead, in the fourth round came the second important duel. Indian Oil vs BPCL was a tense encounter. In the end it was IOCL that emerged on the top riding on the victories of Adhiban and Surya Ganguly against Abhijeet Gupta and Venkatesh MR respectively.

Rank after round 4

We now come to the all important clash in the final round of the tournament. It's undefeated IOCL taking on ONGC. If ONGC manages to win the match, they would become the champions owing to their superior tiebreaks. However, if IOCL manages to hold it to a 2-2 draw, they would be the champions! The pairings would most likely be:

Sasikiran vs Adhiban

Humpy vs Ganguly

Deep Sengupta vs Karthikeyan Murali

Sethuraman vs Lalith Babu

It's going to be a mouth watering encounter and we will bring you all the coverage!

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