Blind National A 2018 R02+03: The atmosphere of a blind tournament

by Sagar Shah - 05/02/2018

You have to be there to feel it! The atmosphere at the blind national premier seems just like any other tournament, but on closer inspection you see things which you would never do at a normal event.We show you these intricate stuff in this article. The tournament is also picking up well. The players motivated by the support they have received from people all over the world and are giving their best. After three rounds we have two leaders Kishan Gangolli and Aryan Joshi. Both of them are on 3.0/3. In this report you will not only see the games, but also some excellent pictures by Amruta Mokal.

Kishan Gangolli and Aryan Joshi lead with 3.0/3

A blind chess tournament has a life of its own. From the outside, it might seem that everything is proceeding normally, but on closer inspection, you realize that there are a lot of things which are uncomfortable for the visually challenged.

When you see a player concentrating like this, you feel that he can see the board normally. That is not the case. In fact, most of them are nearly 75% blind. So they are more often than not just thinking in blindfold and using whatever little vision they have to make the moves.

Knowing the time that is left under time pressure is one of the biggest challenges. What to do in such scenarios? Well, you either pull the clock near to you, call the arbiter, or...

...use a blind clock with ear phones where you can listen to the time that is left. By the way, the recorded next to the clock is the scoresheet for the blind. They cannot write, so they record their moves in it and in case of any dispute this can be used as the scoresheet.

You can see Ashvin Makvana recording his moves

The arbiter has to be extremely alert. For example: a move is called out by one player Re1, but heard by the other player as Rb1. Then both of them have different positions on the board and there can be a lot of problems. An arbiter has to be constantly alert.

The arbiter Manjunath Jain also ensuring that the games are relayed live with the help of Atul Dahale from ChessBase India

You lose all your pride and ego when you see people working at a blind tournament - the chief arbiter is filling water!

Parents ensuring that the players get tea to drink

This guy, Naveen Kumar, has come as an accompanying person with Mari Muthu. But he is acting as a part arbiter, relays live moves and most importantly takes all the players who are completely blind to the wash room.

Video of the atmosphere at the Blind Premier:

How blind do you have to be to take part?

This is one of the questions that I had in my mind when I watched blind players playing. Some of them were completely blind and could see nothing, while some others looked pretty normal. But later I realized that even the players who look completely normal, actually have very little vision. As per the rules, Blindness refers to a condition where a person suffers from any of the following conditions, namely:

1. Total absence of sight; or

2. Visual acuity not exceeding 6/60 or 20/200 (Snellen) in the better eye even with correction lenses; or

3. Limitation of the field of vision subtending an angle of 20 degrees or worse.

Playing chess without vision requires tremendous amount of concentration and focus

If you saw him playing like this, would you imagine he is 100% blind? That's Prachurya Pradhan from Orissa. He is on 2.5/3 and he won in the third round in just 19 moves.

Prachurya is white. How did he finish off his opponent?

Some people prefer playing on different boards...

...some like to play on the same.

16-year-old Aryan Joshi is one of the best players in blind chess right now. The boy hails from Mumbai, is supported by IIFLW and is trained by Raghunandan Gokhale. He is working hard to become a stronger chess player. Have a look at his win over experienced Krishna Udupa.

The timeless classic and arguably the best chess player our country has produced - Kishan Gangolli (left).

Kishan and Aryan are currently in lead with 3.0/3. They are the top two seeds. I have a feeling that it is going to be a race between them to the finish line. And hence, their game in the ninth round is going to be extremely crucial.

Soundarya is Prachurya's brother. He started with a loss in the first round, but then did his homework (he literally did that by studying Odiya Literature for his upcoming examinations) and won both his games on day two!

Just in case you were wondering whether these visually challenged players are all serious and straight faced, well this video will change your perception!

Results of round two:

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

Results of round three:

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

Standings after round three:

Rk.	Name	Rtg	FED	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	Pts.	TB1	TB2	TB3
1	Aryan B Joshi	1813	IND	*					1	1							1	3,0	0,0	3,00	3,0
2	Kishan Gangolli	1996	IND		*									1	1	1		3,0	0,0	2,00	3,0
3	Prachurya Kumar Pradhan	1611	IND			*						½		1			1	2,5	0,0	1,50	2,0
4	Soundarya Kumar Pradhan	1753	IND				*		0		1				1			2,0	0,0	2,00	2,0
5	Makwana Ashvin K	1744	IND					*		½		½					1	2,0	0,0	1,25	1,0
6	Krishna Udupa	1711	IND	0			1		*				½					1,5	0,0	2,50	1,0
7	Marimuthu K	1613	IND	0				½		*			1					1,5	0,0	2,00	1,0
8	Yudhajeet De	1678	IND				0				*		½			1		1,5	0,0	1,00	1,0
9	Deeptyajeet De	1607	IND			½		½				*		0				1,0	0,0	2,25	0,0
10	Gaurav Gadodia	1749	IND						½	0	½		*					1,0	0,0	1,50	0,0
11	Samant Milind	1672	IND		0	0						1		*				1,0	0,0	1,00	1,0
12	Patra Subhendu Kumar	1604	IND		0		0								*	½		0,5	0,5	0,25	0,0
	Patil Shirish	1698	IND		0						0				½	*		0,5	0,5	0,25	0,0
14	Swapanil Shah	1678	IND	0		0		0									*	0,0	0,0	0,00	0,0

Follow live games of the event

Replay all the games

Contribution from all over the world:

Thanks to the contribution from people all around the world, the number of people contributing has reached to 86, while the total amount is Rs. 3,31,153!

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	500	Suhas Murthy
75	500	Dinesh Prakash Gaikwad
76	5000	Tania Sachdev
77	2000	Kunal kochar
78	5000	Padmini Rout
79	5000	Seema Thukral
80	1000	Amit Sanjay Raje
81	2500	Roktim Bandyopadhyay
82	1000	Vedant panesar
83	7500	Nikhil And Dipika Joshi
84	10000	Amruta and Sagar
85	3000	Vasudevan RR
86	5000	Karthikeyan Sankaran
	331153	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.

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