Ireland's first WIM - Trisha Kanyamarala
The Irish Chess Union has two gems of Indian origin in their fold - the brother and sister duo of Tarun and Trisha Kanyamarala. While 15-year-old Tarun is now an FM with a rating of 2376, 14-year-old Trisha became Ireland's first WIM ever. She even crossed 2300 on the live rating list getting her the FM title. In this article we get to know more about the Kanyamarala family - how they took some bold decisions in their chess career to be where they are right now. We also interview Trisha and ask her about her journey from being a young kid who took up chess following her brother's footsteps, to now becoming Ireland's first WIM.
A small background of the Kanyamarala family
The moment I got to know about the Kanyamarala family, I knew they were different. The parents Dayanand and Nandita were open minded, the kids Tarun and Trisha were not interested in the rat race. Dayanand, who is an electronics engineer, worked for Intel for quite some time. Later he took voluntary retirement and started his own software business. The demands of his work made him shift to Ireland where Tarun and Trisha were born and brought up.
Seeing their interest in chess growing, the family took a bold decision of shifting back to India for a few years. India's chess circuit is the most grueling one you can find out there, and Dayanand felt it would be ideal for Tarun and Trisha to fight it out against strong opponents. In 2014, they shifted to Hyderabad in India and extensively played chess. What made Tarun and Trisha different from the rest was the fact that they had no trainers. They improved at chess on their own. Be it using ChessBase softwares and DVDs or forming the Superkids chess academy weekend tournaments or the Any Time Chess concept, the family always thought out of the box in order to keep walking on the path of chess progress.
After spending nearly four years in India both Tarun and Trisha had become battle hardened chess players. Although they shifted back to Ireland, they decided to travel across the world playing in different chess tournaments. As on 1st of March 2020 Tarun (born in 2004), is an FM with an Elo of 2376 and Trisha (born in 2005) with an Elo of 2223 has become Ireland's first WIM! She also has a WGM norm! And mind you, their mother Nandita Kanyamarala is a junior officer at the Irish Chess Union!
Interview with Trisha Kanyamarala
Sagar Shah (SS): Trisha, tell us, how did you start playing chess?
Trisha Kanyamarala (TK): When I was in primary school, I was bored on weekends, we were not doing anything productive. Seeing this my father thought to teach me and my brother chess. I didn't like chess but slowly seeing my brother playing, I wanted to copy him! This is how I started playing chess.
SS: Who were your first trainers?
TK: Tarun was looking for a chess club where he could learn and play chess with other players. In Ireland there are a lot of chess clubs, so finally we found one - The Curragh Chess Club where James and Brendan used to teach beginners with chess cards. I found this very interesting and that's how I started liking and learning the initial moves of chess. We used to go every weekend. We started learning from IM CRG Krishna in 2019 Feb who helped me to improve my chess strength from the last one year.
SS: You and your family have always thought out of the box, tell us a bit about the unconventional decisions you have taken?
TK: Looking at our interest and passion for the game my dad decided to shift to India as it was a chess hub. We shifted to India in 2014. My father didn't hire a coach for me and Tarun. Instead of hiring a coach, he started the Superkids Chess Academy in 2014 where we used to have weekend tournaments and we had most of the local and prominent chess players from Hyderabad coming to our academy. This helped us to improve our chess skills and in 2016 we launched AnyTimeChess (ATC) so that we could play on a daily basis with players like Chetan Sharma, Suresh Duvala, Senior National player Mr. Govind Sharma, G V Srinivas, Perumalu, Harender, Amitpal Singh, Murali Mohan, Ram Mohan Sir, VSN Sir and others. All the ATC players helped me tremendously to improve my strength to take me where I am today.
SS: What is Chess ATC? How did the idea of Chess ATC come about?
TK: ATC (Any Time Chess) was Tarun's idea, where players could come anytime from morning 9 a.m to 9 p.m. We made our own software with a rating and each player had to pay a minimal amount of ₹10 for a game. Every weekend the top 5 players with high ATC rating would win cash prizes. This way we had an opportunity to play and practice chess on daily basis.
SS: What has been the role of your parents in your achievement?
TK: They helped me a lot as they travel with me and encouraged me and my brother.
SS: Tell us a bit about Tarun's role. He is now 2376 and quickly moving up the ladder.
TK: My brother is a 24x7 coach for me. We both analyze and work together. Tarun focuses a lot on my chess strength and pushes me to work hard and learn new things. I find Tarun tremendously helpful when it comes to the opponent's opening preparation. He is really good at predicting what my opponents might play and comes up with tricky ideas naturally. Every day we play lot of blitz games with each other in a particular opening which gives me a good feel of the arising middlegame positions and boosts my confidence while playing the openings at the tournament. Tarun has been learning many new things lately and is working on chess for more than 12 hours each day. He has even started to play well against GMs. He registered his first GM win against Georg Meier on Republic day and on that same day he won against Lupulescu Constantin in blitz playoff.
SS: You have played in India and also in Ireland and rest of the world. Do you find that Indian players are stronger in general? Did playing in India help you?
TKM: Yes, Indian players are very strong and playing in India has helped me become a good player.
SS: How is the chess atmosphere in Ireland?
TKM: Earlier there was not much chess in Ireland, back when we started. But now it's improved a lot, thanks to John Mcmorrow who was the chairperson of ICU. He started organizing a lot of tournaments in a month and conducted a norm event every three months. There is a good FIDE Rated Classical weekend chess tournament culture in Ireland. We play for Balbriggan club with me and Tarun on board no. 2 and no. 1 respectively. So, we get to play with the top players of each club. Currently The Armstrong Leagues are going on and 11 clubs are playing. Every month is full of tournaments that can be seen on the ICU website.
SS: What do you do apart from chess?
TKM: Apart from Chess, we are going to school (Portlaoise College). We are in secondary school. Portlaoise College is very supportive. Me and Tarun Love playing badminton. We play badminton for four hours a week.
SS: What are your next plans?
TK: I didn't plan any open FIDE tournaments yet. I play 4NCL in Division 1B for Gonzaga. I am looking forward to playing my first ever Olympiad in August which is a dream come true for me. I'm really excited that I will be playing in such a prestigious tournament.
SS: You and Tarun are regular readers/viewers of ChessBase India. How has ChessBase India helped you in your journey?
TK: ChessBase India helped me in a great way. If ChessBase India wasn't there I think I would never use ChessBase Products. Hence I would never have been able to prepare against my opponents, annotate and save my games. When I look back in 2014-2016, I think I might not cross even 2000 rating barrier if I didn't have ChessBase. The main reason I could improve at chess is because through ChessBase software I could prepare against my opponents by checking their games from the Mega Database and I could also revise my openings. I can say that ChessBase India and Sagar Shah introduced me to 21st century chess while I was still in the 20th century!
Trisha's favourite game until now:
We asked Trisha to share her favourite game that she has played until now. She shared with us her win against IM Georg Froewis from Austria rated 2470.
Links:
Follow Tarun and Trisha's Chess ATC YouTube channel
Official website of the Irish Chess Union
Tarun Kanyamarala wins the Limerick Open 2019
Any Time Chess - A brand new concept for chess education
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Tarun Kanyamarala wins Limerick Open 2019
@ 03/11/2019 by Shahid Ahmed (en) |