3rd Mumbai IIFLW under-13 Round 1+2: It's a tournament with life!

The EKA by IIFLIM 3rd Mumbai International Chess tournament 2017-18 is back! It's one of the most awaited events of the year because it has two tournaments running simultaneously. In the morning you have the under-13 kids battling it out for the first prize of Rs.1,50,000 (Yes, it's the highest prize money under-13 event in the world) and in the evening you have the open event where some of the best grandmasters all around the world are seen in action. This report deals with round one and two of under-13 Mumbai International.

The under-13 event is something that I love. Mainly because there are a lot of future stars that you can see in action. Also you see some very raw expressions from the players which you do not see in the open section. This is a delight for our ace photographer Amruta Mokal. "I think the under-13 kids give some very nice expressions because they are not used to professional photographers shooting them. While in the open section almost all the players are used to it and give a very polished look."

The playing hall at the Mount Litera school is one of the best that you will see. The sheer size of the hall gives you a feeling of grandeur. And with 104 DGT boards, it is a record of number of live games being shown in an Indian event. In fact the quantum was so high that the server of the official website crashed for a while. The organizers were quick to fix the issue. Hats off to Anandhbabu and Sandesh Nagarnaik for pulling off this ambitious project to broadcast 104 boards live.

This year the tournament is organized by EKA which is the Corporate Social Responsibility initiative taken by IIFLIM (India Infoline of Investment Managers). EKA currently promotes three sports in India - chess, tennis and golf. The word literally translates to 'one' which is the vision of IIFLIM. All sports should be included under the umbrella of EKA. Chess was the first sport that IIFLW decided to support and they are extremely happy with the way things have turned out. Co-founder and Executive Director of IIFLW Yatin Shah was at the venue and we decided to ask him why a corporate giant like IIFLW supports chess in such a big way.

One thing which I find odd is the fact that only one board is placed on the big stage. Although aesthetically this might look quite pleasing, for practical reasons I would have been happy if there were four boards on top. First of all the first row (i.e boards 2-15 and beyond) would not be as crowded as they are right now and secondly sometimes games on second and third board are just as important as the top board and can very well decide the winner of the tournament.

Although the first round pairings were pretty skewed, Tarun played a very logical game of chess to win the game of the day prize. We will tell you the exact reason for the selection of his game in a bit, but first try your hand at solving this position:

Tarun played the move ....h5 here. His idea was to continue with g6, Kg7 followed by Rh8 and then g5-g4. Finding such plans which create something in a region of the board where nothing exists is not easy. Due credit must be given to the young boy.

Results of round 1:

Results of round 2:

Pairings of round 3:

Watch all the games live