Blind National A 2018 R01: Tournament takes off thanks to public support!

by Sagar Shah - 04/02/2018

2,93,153! Yes, that's the amount the chess community has contributed towards the National Premier Blind 2018. A total of 74 donors have come forward in just two days! When you have such a tremendous backing for the event, the morale of the players is bound to be on a high. As one of the participants said, "I feel more motivated this year because I know a lot of people will be seeing my games!" Thank you, dear contributors, for making this tournament possible. The first round began on 3rd of February 2018 and we saw some very interesting chess being played. Detailed report with analysis by IM Sagar Shah.

Marimuthu and Krishna Udupa shine on day one

After receiving some heart-warming support from the chess community all over India, the National Premier Blind 2018 began on the afternoon of the 3rd of February 2018. 14 of the best blind players in our country were pitted against each other. There were quite a few upsets in the first round itself. The fight is for the top five spots as they will be representing India at the International arena. This is the first time that we are witnessing three players below the age of twenty - Aryan Joshi (born in 2001), M. Marimuthu (2001), and Soundarya Pradhan (1999). This clearly shows that new young talents are entering blind chess with loads of ambition and fresh energy.

Mr. Ravindra Dongre was the chief guest at the opening ceremony. Did you know: Mr Dongre was instrumental in AICFB being launched in 1997. He is currently the advisor to the AICFB.

It is pretty rare for me to be on the stage at the opening ceremony. But I used this opportunity to tell the players as to how the chess community was looking forward to this tournament eagerly. "Many top GMs, IMs, WGMs and WIMs would be following your games, so play to the best of your potential!"

Dr Charudatta Jadhav being felicitated by Aryan Joshi. Charu is currently the President of the AICFB and one of the key reasons why blind chess has progressed in the country.

"I think the blind tournament has more life for an arbiter than a normal event. At a normal tournament, once the round begins you can relax, while here you have a lot of work including taking care of the needs of the players and telling them the time left on their clock and so on." - Chief Arbiter Manjunath Jain who is doing an amazing job!

That's how the playing hall looks like. There are 14 players, 7 boards. In the center, you can see the live boards that are being used. We are awaiting a key wire that will arrive today in order to broadcast the games live.

Some players use an individual board, make a move on it and call out, while some players use just one chess board like we do in sighted chess. Those who are partially sighted and don't need to constantly touch the pieces to know where they are, use only one board like you can see on the extreme right in the above picture (in the game between Subhendu and Kishan). While those who are completely blind need their individual chess set and call out their moves.

That's Yudhajeet De from West Bengal feeling his way through the position. Yudhajeet his 100% blind and hence needs to feel the pieces. He cannot maintain a scoresheet and hence has a recorder by his side to note down the moves. This will come in handy in case of any dispute.

Look at the black pieces carefully. You will see a small pointed dot at the top of it. The white pieces don't have it. It is for the players to differentiate between white and black pieces.

These are the new chess sets introduced by AICFB recently. They invested tangible amounts in procuring the dye and now can produce such boards at a very reasonable cost.

4-time National blind champion Kishan Gangolli is looking for his fifth straight title at the event

Kishan Gangolli is one of the best blind chess players that our country has produced. He has four national titles in his kitty, is the current Asian champion and also the individual gold and bronze medal winner at the Olympiad. He won his first round pretty quickly against Subhendu Kumar Patra.

Krishna Udupa (right) is a very famous trainer in Shimoga, Karnataka. He played in the sighted section for many years, until his vision became so blurre that he could no longer compete. He took on Soundarya Pradhan in the first round.

Soundarya Pradhan is just 18 years old, but has already been a part of the Indian team many times. He is surely one of the best players we have right now in blind chess. However, he is currently torn between academics and chess. He is trying to prepare for his 12th grade examination, and somehow this showed in his play. He had excellent compensation for a pawn, but played not in the best manner and lost.

All that White has to do is develop. With moves like Re1, Bf4 etc. he has superb compensation for a pawn. But Soundarya took on c6 and this was the real mistake as it allowed Nxc6 after which Black was doing fine.

West Bengal youngster Yudhajeet De had a very lucky day at the office against Shirish Patil. He was lost in the middlegame, but fought back and in the endgame where he was a pawn down in a rook endgame, his opponent blundered big time!

Win for White was already gone when he pushed his pawn from b6-b7. But now he made the ultimate blunder with Rd8 and resigned after a move. You see what's coming, right?

For Shirish Patil, who had played a good game of chess, this was a rude awakening

Prachurya Pradhan (right) won his game against Milind Samant

The opening went fine for Milind Samant. However, at a critical moment when he had to break the position he went for a bad plan and Prachurya was all over him. In a completely winning position Soundarya allowed Milind a perpetual, but the player from Pune missed it and it was the youngster who bagged the full point.

Aryan Joshi (right) is someone to watch out for in this tournament. He beat Swapnil Shah in round one.

Trained by Raghunandan Gokhale, and backed by IIFLW, 16-year-old Aryan Joshi is the second seed of the tournament. He played a very interesting battle against Swapnil Shah in the first round. In a Colle Zukertort opening, it seemed as if Black had no real issues. But as the moves were made, it became clear that White (Aryan) had a strong attack and that Black had to play accurately to fend it off. Swapnil couldn't defend in the best manner and lost his queen towards the end.

Marimuthu (right) from Coimbatore set a sly trap out of the opening against Gaurav Gadodia and took home the full point.

White has just played Qd2, what would you play as Black?

If you too played like Marimuthu with ...Nxd4 then you have the right idea, but the wrong execution because ...Nxd4 is met with Qxd4! Hence, it is important to start with Nxe4 when the key point of the entire combination is that Nxc6 is met with ...Qxc3!

The game between Deeptyajeet (left) and Ashwin Makvana (right) was a draw

Results of round 1:

Bo.	No.	Rtg	Name	Result	Name	Rtg	No.
1	1	1604	Patra Subhendu Kumar	0 - 1	Kishan Gangolli	1996	14
2	2	1698	Patil Shirish	0 - 1	Yudhajeet De	1678	13
3	3	1753	Soundarya Kumar Pradhan	0 - 1	Krishna Udupa	1711	12
4	4	1749	Gaurav Gadodia	0 - 1	Marimuthu K	1613	11
5	5	1813	Aryan B Joshi	1 - 0	Swapanil Shah	1678	10
6	6	1744	Makwana Ashvin K	½ - ½	Deeptyajeet De	1607	9
7	7	1611	Prachurya Kumar Pradhan	1 - 0	Samant Milind	1672	8

Ranking crosstable after Round 1

Rk.	Name	Rtg	FED	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	Pts.	TB1	TB2	TB3
1	Marimuthu K	1613	IND	*											1			1,0	0,0	0,00	1,0
	Krishna Udupa	1711	IND		*									1				1,0	0,0	0,00	1,0
	Yudhajeet De	1678	IND			*							1					1,0	0,0	0,00	1,0
	Kishan Gangolli	1996	IND				*					1						1,0	0,0	0,00	1,0
5	Aryan B Joshi	1813	IND					*									1	1,0	0,0	0,00	1,0
	Prachurya Kumar Pradhan	1611	IND						*							1		1,0	0,0	0,00	1,0
7	Makwana Ashvin K	1744	IND							*	½							0,5	0,5	0,25	0,0
	Deeptyajeet De	1607	IND							½	*							0,5	0,5	0,25	0,0
9	Patra Subhendu Kumar	1604	IND				0					*						0,0	0,0	0,00	0,0
	Patil Shirish	1698	IND			0							*					0,0	0,0	0,00	0,0
	Soundarya Kumar Pradhan	1753	IND		0									*				0,0	0,0	0,00	0,0
	Gaurav Gadodia	1749	IND	0											*			0,0	0,0	0,00	0,0
	Samant Milind	1672	IND						0							*		0,0	0,0	0,00	0,0
	Swapnil Shah	1678	IND					0									*	0,0	0,0	0,00	0,0

Contribution from the chess community:

There were no backers or sponsors for the Blind National Premier 2018. We called upon the chess community to contribute towards the cost of the event. The total amount that was required was Rs. 5,12,000. And we are proud to say that in two days, chess players from all over India have contributed Rs. 2,93,153.

No.	Amount	Name
1	5000	Sachin Samant
2	2000	Rochelle D'souza
3	11000	Madhusudan Iyer
4	1000	Atul Dahale
5	10000	Ritu Mohit Bhandari
6	25000	Sainath Ramanathan
7	2000	Priti Mahendru
8	1000	Mamta wadhwa
9	5000	Shailesh Gadre
10	5000	Avathanshu Bhat
11	500	Rekha Raghavan
12	1000	Vikas Sharma
13	10800	Rekha Pinkesh Nahar
14	1000	Aditya Mukund Kulkarni
15	2100	V j gupta
16	500	Nishchint Sharma
17	1500	Jeet shah
18	5000	Swapnil Kothari
19	11000	Sanjoy Shome
20	1000	Sudhahar
21	1000	Giriappa T Amin
22	2000	Vanita Noronha
23	500	Rajesh gupta
24	1000	Tamojit Chakraborty
25	200	Devansh Singh
26	5000	Shubham Sanjiv Kumthekar
27	100	Harshal Pramod Patil
28	10000	Sushir Lohia
29	2000	PAVAN BNB
30	2000	Nitish Mittal
31	5000	Sudip Singh
32	2000	S C AGARWAL
33	1000	Deepak chavan
34	1500	sanjeev Tambe
35	2000	Laishram Imocha
36	1000	Niranjan Prasad
37	2000	Niranjan Prasad
38	500	Eshan Tilwani
39	10000	Vedaprakash PC
40	5000	Vivek Gupta
41	2000	Prathamesh Mokal
42	1000	Chaitanya Kulkarni
43	251	Aditya Vimal
44	1000	Mitul KH
45	1000	Aruna Shiv shankar Singare
46	2000	Sneha Ghatpande
47	2500	Abdesh Jha
48	10000	Anand Kashelkar
49	27000	Mullick Somnath Charitable trust
50	1001	Ramkrishna Kashelkar
51	2000	Aravind
52	2000	PR Krishna
53	1000	Aniruddha Deshpande
54	3000	Sundararajan Kidambi
55	2500	Rahul Anil Bhagwat
56	5000	Himanshu Kumar
57	500	Rohan Bharat Joshi
58	500	Yoges kumbhar and Deepak vaychal
59	5000	Romit
60	700	Vishal Sodani
61	2000	sankaran ponnada krishnaswamy
62	1000	Durgaprasad Mahapatra
63	1500	Priyanka Ved
64	1001	CMA (Dr.) Ashish Thatte
65	5000	BHAKTI PRADIP KULKARNI
66	500	VIMAL RAJ M
67	1000	Pankaj arora
68	2000	Vikrant Malvankar
69	1000	Satyajit Basak
70	2000	Sureshkumar .T.J
71	30000	Karthik Rangarajan
72	10000	Jayaram Swaminathan
73	1000	Bina Manoj Sanghvi
74	10000	Amruta and Sagar
	293153	TOTAL

We are closer to the goal now, but still some distance to travel. Rs. 5,12,000 looks like a realistic possibility. If you feel like it, please contribute towards this noble cause.

You can also contribute directly to the bank of AICFB. Here are the bank details:

All India Chess Federation For The Blind

Indian Bank

SB a/c: 415222082

IFSC: IDIB000B027

Address: Ground floor, United India Building, Sir P. M. Road, Fort Branch, Mumbai – 400001.

If you do make a direct payment to the above-mentioned bank please send a mail to office@aicfb.in with a copy (cc) to chessbaseindia@gmail.comwith the amount of contribution, your name, address and Permanent Account Number (PAN). These details are mandatory for tax purpose.

Radio chess:

Radio Chess is an initiative by the AICFB for its players. To keep them abreast with the latest chess news, interviews and updates. However, I think this app is useful for any chess player. Try to download it from the Google playstore and we are sure you will find this to be a valuable resource.

This app is available in Google Play Store. Radio Chess is a brainchild of Dr. Charudatta Jadhav.

Visit the tournament hall, today!

4th February 2018 is a double round day at the National Premier blind. The first round begins at 9 a.m. and the next one at 2.30 p.m. It will go on until 6.30 p.m. If you are in Mumbai, try and visit the event. You will get a feel for how these players play, the challenges they face and how much concentration it takes to play a game when you cannot see the pieces. Here's address on the google maps: