Chess Tournament in a Café in Galleria Market, Gurgaon
Chess tournament at a cafe/restaurant is quite a common practice in the European countries. However, it is not so common here in India. Pranav Arora has taken it upon himself to change that notion. He launched a cafe named Tiny Tuscan in Gurgaon as he craved for Panini which had a dearth in the Indian market. His love for chess got rekindled during the Covid-19 pandemic, and he wanted to do something on his own to contribute to the ever-growing chess community. He organizes a 12-player round-robin chess tournament generally on Sundays and so far he has organized six editions. Nitin M Pai who won the first edition shares his experience. Photo: Nitin M Pai
Nitin M Pai wins first edition of their Round Robin tournament
Chess in India has seen a drastic decrease in over the board chess tournaments as well as friendly games in chess clubs and academies that were very common in pre-covid times.
Things were turning around in late 2021 with few FIDE Rated tournaments and the Indian Chess Calendar looked promising with various FIDE rated events as well as National Championships lined up in January and the following months.
However, due to the third wave of the Covid pandemic caused by the Omicron variant, many organizers have had to cancel/postpone their events in January and chess enthusiasts had to further undergo a lot of uncertainty and anxiety on the resumption of OTB events.
That’s when countless lovers of the game have found their own innovative ways to promote the game in different parts of the country and one such story is of Pranav Arora, who runs an Italian Restro-Café in Galleria Market, Gurgaon and has also recently started using his Café space to promote chess under the name of Tiny Tuscan Chess club.
The café lets people borrow a chess set for friendly games at very reasonable rates while they enjoy their food and on weekends, the café organizes a chess tournament in its premises, with a part of the café shut down and dedicated for the chess tournament for 4-5 hours.
Pranav got the idea of running the café when he realized a gap for Panini focused restaurants in the Indian Market, given his love for the dish and it being his regular meal between classes while doing his Master’s degree in finance in Scotland.
In 2020, Pranav was inspired by Samay Raina streaming chess on his YouTube channel, and wanted to do something himself to promote a game, which he had been playing as a hobby since his school days.
However, due to the covid first wave and the devastating second wave after, he could only put his plan to place in the latter part of 2021, and founded the Tiny Tuscan Chess club in his café premises.
In Mid-January, yours truly came across their Instagram ad, about an upcoming Sunday round-robin tournament, just when I was disappointed that one of the FIDE rated rapid tournaments I had made arrangements to play later in the month had been postponed to March due to the third wave.
I followed the Instagram page and immediately contacted Pranav through Instagram as well as on phone and soon after registered for the event, given that the tournament was only open to the first 12 registrations due to space and time constraints of a round-robin event.
While I had heard of such events in restaurants and cafés happening in parts of Europe, as well as a chess themed café in Ahmedabad run by Ankit Dalal, this was going to be my first experience of visiting one and therefore I decided to visit the café for dinner on the night before the tournament, given the place was just 10 minutes from my place.
The tournament kickstarted at 11 am on Sunday, 23rd Jan, with 12 players including two FIDE rated players, with the others being strong unrated players having comparable ratings on chess.com and lichess. The field had a good mix by age group, from high school and college students to veterans.
The games were played using various chess clock apps on mobile phones with 10 mins straight finish time controls. Few FIDE rules such as touch piece as well as penalties for illegal moves were waived off for the benefit of few players who were new to OTB chess, having picked it up seriously in the online format during the pandemic. (Because the concept of touch piece or illegal move just does not exist in online chess!). However, players had to press the clock with the same playing hand and moves were considered to be complete once a piece was moved to a new square and the hand was removed.
The cash prizes for top four were - Rs 1500, 1250, 750 and 500 each respectively.
Everyone had a great time and exchanged numbers as well as online chess IDs to play games online until the next tournament at the club.
The next event of the club was the 7th edition of their knockout tournament which took place on 6th Feb, with players playing their opponents with a game each with white and black pieces, similar to the world cup, with the same time control of 10 mins straight finish.
All chess enthusiasts in Gurgaon and Delhi NCR are welcome to the future events of the chess club, as well as enjoy the facility to play casual games with their friends while also enjoying the great food they serve.
For updates on future events held by the club, follow their Instagram page and also share with your friends and chess circle to help promote and build this chess community.
Links
Tiny Tuscan Chess Club - instagram and youtube
About the Author
Nitin M Pai is a FIDE Rated Chess player and works as a Management Consultant with Monitor Deloitte in their Delhi office. He currently pursues Chess as a hobby and actively looks out for opportunities to play OTB tournaments on weekends and during his vacations. In December, he fulfilled his dream of playing a Chess tournament in Europe at the Lorca International Open in Spain, scoring 4.5/9 against a field of significantly higher rated opponents.