Arul Anandh wins 3rd Little England Rating Open 2023 with a round to spare
16-year-old Arul Anandh S P K scored eight straight wins to become the winner of 3rd Little England Rating Open 2023. The 31st seeded 1678 rated teenager won the tournament 8/9 with one round to spare. Thus, a last round loss to the eventual runner-up Arpan Das 7.5/9 did not deter his championship chances. Top seed IM Ratnakaran K and Dhanush Ragav N S also scored 7.5/9. They secured third and fourth place respectively. . The total prize fund of the tournament was ₹500001. The top three prizes were ₹60001, ₹40000 and ₹30000 along with a trophy each. The tournament was organized by Viyugam Chess Academy and Ananthi Chess Academy. Check out the annotated game by the champion Arul himself. All photos in this article are by IA R Anantharam
Arul's first Rating tournament triumph
Untitled SPK Arul Anandh won the Little England 3rd FIDE rated chess tournament organised by Ananthi Chess Academy, Madurai and Viyugam Chess Academy, Hosur held at the Adhiyamaan College of Engineering, Hosur from 1st to 5th February 2023. He defeated five higher rated players including IM K Ratnakaran on his way to the summit. His success is phenomenal, as he was 31st seeded in the tournament, with a rating of 1678. The tournament was held the very next day after the National Schools in the same venue.
Irrespective of the loss to West Bengal’s Arpan Das in the final round, Arul clinched the title, as he had a commanding lead of 1.5 points by the end of the eighth and penultimate round.
With three international masters and three FMs in the fray, IM Ratnakaran K of Southern Railway was the top seed of the tournament. The other two IMs were M Chakravarthy Reddy of Telangana and R Balasubramaniam of Tamil Nadu; but the former withdrew from the tournament after conceding a draw to Niroshan Thanikachalam of Tamil Nadu, who is rated more than one thousand points below him.
33rd Tamil Nadu State under-12 Open champion, P Vignesh Kannan extricated half a point from the IM Ratnakaran in the fourth round. Ratnakaran had to be satisfied with the third place.
Three players Arpan Das, IM Ratnakaran K of Southern Railway and Dhanush Raghav of Tamil Nadu scored 7.5 points and tied for the second to fourth places. Arpan pipped Ratnakaran by a whisker in the third tiebreak, both having same values in the first two. Dhanush finished fourth. Eight players collected seven points to rank themselves from fifth to twelfth places.
Ratnakaran’s draw in the fourth round enabled IM R Balasubramaniam to pop up to the top, wherein he was also forced to split the point with Karnataka’s Apoorv Kamble.
Arul Anandh and P Vijay Shreeram also of TN shot into the lead at the end of the fifth round by beating Selvamurugan B of TN and Raju J K of AP respectively. The duel between the two leaders ended in favour of Arul to surge ahead.
Arul celebrated his seventh win in as many rounds by inflicting a shocking defeat to the top seed IM Ratnakaran.
His win over Raju J K of AP in the eighth round made sure of his title, with one round to spare.
The third round draw by Sreyas Payyappat of Kerala, the second runner-up in the Asian Under 14 Nations Cup 2022, with Pranay Akula of Telangana pushed him to the 13th place.
Why Little England? The city Hosur’s nearby village Thally, about 40 km from Bengaluru is popularly known as Little England, because of its similar climate and cultivation of vegetables, flowers and fruits as in England.
The tournament organiser Pragadesh used to name his tournaments in an interesting manner. His GM tournament, Athens of the East is named after Madurai, which had cultural and business ties with Athens, Greece, several hundreds of years back.
A salient feature of the Little England tournament is the introduction of idchess, used to digitize the game using just a mobile phone. The device is being tested by Mr. B Arasu, a member of the Technical commission and a team leader in an Australian software company. No extensive and complicated connections are required. It captures the images of piece movement even on a vinyl or ordinary wooden board.
According to the idchess publication, the app allows to record and save games played on a normal board (not digital) in pgn and gif formats, conduct live broadcasts, download pgn files, share games with anybody, track and analyse progress in the games and view selction of best games.
A total of 274 players including three IMs participated from various parts of the country and one from Sri Lanka and USA each. The nine-round Swiss league Rating tournament took place from 1st to 5th February 2023. It was organized by Viyugam Chess Academy and Ananthi Chess Academy at Adhiyamaan College of Engineering, Hosur, Tamil Nadu. The time control of the tournament was 90 minutes + 30 seconds increment from move no.1.
Replay all available games
Final standings
| Rk. | SNo | Name | Typ | sex | FED | Rtg | RtgI | Club/City | Pts. | TB1 | TB2 | TB3 | TB4 | TB5 | |
| 1 | 31 | Arul Anandh S P K | IND | 1678 | 1678 | TN | 8 | 50 | 53,5 | 46,50 | 0 | 8 | |||
| 2 | 10 | Arpan Das | IND | 1943 | 1943 | WB | 7,5 | 49,5 | 53,5 | 43,75 | 0 | 6 | |||
| 3 | 1 | IM | Ratnakaran K. | IND | 2290 | 2290 | S.Rlys | 7,5 | 49,5 | 53,5 | 42,25 | 0 | 7 | ||
| 4 | 16 | Dhanush Ragav N S | IND | 1871 | 1871 | TN | 7,5 | 48 | 53 | 44,50 | 0 | 6 | |||
| 5 | 8 | Ram S. Krishnan | IND | 2002 | 2002 | BSNL | 7 | 49 | 53 | 38,25 | 0 | 6 | |||
| 6 | 13 | Dinesh Rajan M | IND | 1894 | 1894 | TN | 7 | 48,5 | 53,5 | 41,25 | 0 | 5 | |||
| 7 | 4 | Manigandan S S | IND | 2120 | 2120 | TN | 7 | 48 | 52,5 | 39,75 | 0 | 6 | |||
| 8 | 27 | Reyan Md. | U13 | IND | 1707 | 1707 | BIH | 7 | 48 | 52 | 38,00 | 0 | 5 | ||
| 9 | 22 | Rohith S | U15 | IND | 1738 | 1738 | TN | 7 | 48 | 51,5 | 38,25 | 0 | 6 | ||
| 10 | 3 | FM | Prasannaa.S | IND | 2160 | 2160 | TN | 7 | 45,5 | 49,5 | 36,25 | 0 | 6 | ||
| 11 | 15 | Aakash G | U13 | IND | 1881 | 1881 | TN | 7 | 44 | 48 | 36,75 | 0 | 6 | ||
| 12 | 69 | Adhiraj Mitra | U11 | IND | 1455 | 1455 | JHAR | 7 | 43 | 47 | 36,00 | 0 | 7 | ||
| 13 | 5 | FM | Sreyas Payyappat | U15 | IND | 2105 | 2105 | KER | 6,5 | 51 | 55 | 37,75 | 0 | 5 | |
| 14 | 7 | FM | Ayushh Ravikumar | IND | 2032 | 2032 | TN | 6,5 | 49 | 53,5 | 37,25 | 0 | 5 | ||
| 15 | 35 | Agarwal Mukund H | U15 | IND | 1651 | 1651 | GUJ | 6,5 | 48,5 | 52,5 | 37,00 | 0 | 4 | ||
| 16 | 17 | Selvamurugan B | IND | 1858 | 1858 | TN | 6,5 | 48 | 52,5 | 33,75 | 0 | 6 | |||
| 17 | 57 | Sri Charan Sandipagu | U15 | IND | 1495 | 1495 | TEL | 6,5 | 47,5 | 51 | 33,75 | 0 | 5 | ||
| 18 | 37 | Sathvik Adiga | U13 | IND | 1617 | 1617 | KAR | 6,5 | 47 | 51 | 34,50 | 0 | 5 | ||
| 19 | 28 | Swarna Nihal | U15 | IND | 1703 | 1703 | AP | 6,5 | 44,5 | 48,5 | 35,25 | 0 | 5 | ||
| 20 | 34 | Kumaresh A | IND | 1656 | 1656 | TN | 6,5 | 44,5 | 48,5 | 32,50 | 0 | 5 | |||
| 21 | 14 | Mithun Anand V | IND | 1884 | 1884 | TN | 6,5 | 44 | 48,5 | 32,75 | 0 | 6 | |||
| 22 | 19 | Vignesh Kannan P | U13 | IND | 1793 | 1793 | TN | 6,5 | 42,5 | 46,5 | 31,25 | 0 | 6 | ||
| 23 | 9 | IM | Ramnathan Balasubramaniam | IND | 1968 | 1968 | TN | 6 | 50 | 54,5 | 33,00 | 0 | 5 | ||
| 24 | 18 | Apoorv Kamble | U15 | IND | 1856 | 1856 | KAR | 6 | 48,5 | 53 | 33,25 | 0 | 5 | ||
| 25 | 41 | Mitul K H | U13 | IND | 1586 | 1586 | KAR | 6 | 48,5 | 52,5 | 30,00 | 0 | 6 | ||
| 26 | 152 | Aarit Kapil | U09 | IND | 1214 | 1214 | DEL | 6 | 47,5 | 51,5 | 32,25 | 0 | 5 | ||
| 27 | 51 | Pranay Akula | U15 | IND | 1532 | 1532 | TEL | 6 | 46,5 | 50,5 | 25,75 | 0 | 5 | ||
| 28 | 32 | Anirudh R | U15 | IND | 1673 | 1673 | TN | 6 | 46 | 50 | 31,50 | 0 | 4 | ||
| 29 | 12 | Priyankara Chamil | SRI | 1912 | 1912 | SRI | 6 | 46 | 50 | 31,00 | 0 | 6 | |||
| 30 | 11 | Raju J.K. | IND | 1942 | 1942 | AP | 6 | 46 | 50 | 27,00 | 0 | 6 |
About the Author
Prof. Rathinam Anantharam is an A-grade international arbiter. Member of FIDE Arbiters’ Commission, Chairman of Titles Commission in All India Chess Federation, Vice President of Tamil Nadu State Chess Association, Chief Arbiter for six world championships, many Asian, International and National Championships.
The report was edited by Shahid Ahmed
