Contribution for National A Blind 2018 crosses Rs. 5,00,000!

by Sagar Shah - 08/02/2018

We have reached our goal! We started with the aim of collecting Rs. 5,12,000 for the event on 2nd of February 2018 and you will be pleased to know that on 8th of February we have collected Rs. 5,12,053! It's a victory for the blind chess community! A huge "thank you" to all of you who helped by contributing and spreading the word! The tournament has reached a key point with just five rounds to go. With five spots at stake for the World Team Championship in Bulgaria later this year, things are getting tense. Kishan Gangolli seems to be on course to get his fifth national title! Can someone stop him?

111 donors from all over India ensure that Blind National A is fully sponsored!

We made an appeal to the chess community at large - Please contribute to the blind national premier 2018. They had no sponsors apart from HPCL which was sponsoring Rs.50,000. The total expenses of the event that needed to be covered were Rs.5,12,000. The response has been humungous and in the last five days, we have collected Rs. 5,12,053! It's a proud moment for the entire chess fraternity of India.

Breakdown of Contribution received:

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
87	19400	Ramesh Balasubramanium
88	5000	Anjali patil
89	5000	Vandana Bhansali
90	1000	Abhinav Shetty
91	500	Sunita Prasad
92	10000	Ashutosh Datar
93	1000	Vidit
94	11000	Manoj Dengla
95	45000	Not to be disclosed
96	500	Rishi Kaushik
97	1000	Dr. Himadri Roy
98	10000	Akshay Sekhri
99	1000	Venkatesan Vembu
100	3000	Swayangsu Satyapragyan
101	2000	Aarti akash
102	45000	Not to be disclosed
103	5000	Viyugam Chess Academy
104	3000	Srinivas Rangan
105	500	Nikhil Dixit
106	2500	Ramkrishna Kashelkar
107	3000	Paras Gudka
108	2000	Manish Bajpai
109	500	Pradeep Cavale
110	1000	Aslam shirawala
111	25000	Dharmen Shah
112	10000	Shashi Kumar
	544053	TOTAL

This support is extremely heartwarming for the entire blind chess community. Your contribution has boosted the morale of all the players here. "We are enjoying this tournament tremendously because we feel that the world is watching our moves!" That's the general mood of the players at the Andheri Sports Complex.

The goal has been reached for this event. But if you do make the contribution, this money will be used to promote blind chess in the country by AICFB.

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.

Kishan Gangolli maintains his lead

Kishan definitely seems like a man in control. After eight rounds he is on 7.0/8. He has drawn two games against Gaurav Gadodia and Soundarya Pradhan. But apart from this he has be untouched.

Kishan Gangolli is pacing himself well. He wins his games at the right moments and makes draws, ensures that he doesn't lose and has a one-point lead over the field.

He played a very nice game against Swapnil Shah in the sixth round of the tournament which won him the game of the day award:

Kishan drew his sixth round game against Gaurav. The Mumbai based lawyer was better but as always came under time pressure and couldn't make the most of his situation. He accepted the draw.

In the eighth round with the white pieces Kishan once again played for the win and came out on the top against Marimuthu.

Aryan Joshi from Mumbai is currently in the second spot with 6.0/8. He won a very nice game against Gaurav Gadodia in the eighth round.

Yudhajeet De true to his name fought hard when he was pitted against his brother Deeptyajeet. It speaks volumes about the mental strength of the De brothers that they played each other.

In the end it was Yudhajeet who won the game

The result didn't stop the brothers from having a nice meal together after the game!

One of the stars of Shimoga, Karnataka - Krishna Udupa. This man has ensured many champions are created from the state of Karanataka like Stany, Gangolli and many others

This was the longest game of the event lasting 128 moves! Aryan was on the backfoot, but Shirish lost his stamina, blundered and gave away a free queen towards the end.

One of Amruta's excellent shots!

Ashvin Makwana is currently in number three spot with 5.5/8

We try to find every angle to see the position, while they are sitting in the front row and unable to see anything!

Andheri Sports Complex has a world class swimming pool and a football stadium with excellent facilities of table tennis and badminton and just about every sport. Why not make a dedicated chess room as well?

The man who is responsible for building up the Radio Chess App. Do download it from the playstore for some amazing content related to chess.

It's a family!

There has been some excellent coverage with journalists from many newsportals and magazines have come to interview the players

I conducted the workshop on how to use ChessBase. But it was not just one way. They suggested me the improvements that needed to be made in order to make ChessBase more accessible.

The Pradhan family enjoys a nice quiet meal at the end of a long day! Prachurya and Soundarya play each other in round nine.

Ranking crosstable after round 8

Rk.	Name	Rtg	FED	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	Pts.	TB1	TB2	TB3
1	Kishan Gangolli	1996	IND	*			½			1		1	1	1	1	1	½	7,0	0,0	21,00	6,0
2	Aryan B Joshi	1813	IND		*		½	½		0	1	1	1		1		1	6,0	0,0	19,25	5,0
3	Makwana Ashvin K	1744	IND			*	½	1		½	1	½	½		1	½		5,5	0,0	19,75	3,0
4	Soundarya Kumar Pradhan	1753	IND	½	½	½	*	1		1	0	1					½	5,0	0,0	21,75	3,0
5	Yudhajeet De	1678	IND		½	0	0	*	½			1		1		1	½	4,5	0,5	14,25	3,0
6	Prachurya Kumar Pradhan	1611	IND					½	*	0	½	0	1	1	1	½		4,5	0,5	13,50	3,0
7	Patra Subhendu Kumar	1604	IND	0	1	½	0		1	*		½		0			1	4,0	0,0	16,75	3,0
8	Krishna Udupa	1711	IND		0	0	1		½		*			1	½	½	½	4,0	0,0	13,25	2,0
9	Patil Shirish	1698	IND	0	0	½	0	0	1	½		*					1	3,0	0,0	11,25	2,0
10	Marimuthu K	1613	IND	0	0	½			0				*	1	0	½	1	3,0	0,0	8,50	2,0
11	Samant Milind	1672	IND	0				0	0	1	0		0	*	½	1		2,5	1,5	7,75	2,0
12	Swapanil Shah	1678	IND	0	0	0			0		½		1	½	*	½		2,5	1,0	7,50	1,0
13	Deeptyajeet De	1607	IND	0		½		0	½		½		½	0	½	*		2,5	0,5	9,75	0,0
14	Gaurav Gadodia	1749	IND	½	0		½	½		0	½	0	0				*	2,0	0,0	10,25	0,0

Pairings of round 9

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

And that's the reason why we all love Vishy Anand!