Nubairshah Shaikh, born in 1998, is now 22 years old. He is rated around 2440 and has two GM norms, the second one was achieved just a couple of days ago at the Cappelle La Grande tournament in France. What makes Nubair's achievement unique is the fact that he has always tried to maintain his chess and education. He could have very well progressed faster at chess, but he chose to finish his engineering course and is now a civil engineer. He finished his engineering just last year and is now devoting all his energy towards his GM title.

Nubairshah Shaikh - an IM, two GM norms and a Civil Engineer

Nubair finished ninth at the Cappelle La Grande tournament. It was a fine performance as there were 13 GMs and 16 IMs taking part in the event. Stany GA was the highest finishing Indian as he scored 7.0/9.

When you have to perform at an Elo of 2600+, you have to make sure that you are unbeaten! Nubair drew against five GMs and beat one of them!

Making sure that the Indian flag was flying high! That's Nubair on the right fighting against GM Namig Guliyev of Azerbaijan

Test your chess with Nubairshah Shaikh

One of the most exciting games of the tournament for Nubairshah Shaikh was his seventh round win over GM Ivaljo Enchev. What made the game unique was the fact that by move no.10 both of the players had two queens on the board! We invite you to solve the four positions given below and see if you can crack all of them!

 

Enchev vs Nubairshah Shaikh. Round 7

Question 1: What a position after just 10 moves! It's black to move! How can he wrest over the initiative?

Question 2: Black is a piece up, but White has an amazing combination at his disposal here. Can you find it?

Question 3: Nubair has a few queen moves to choose from. What should he play?

Question 4: This is White's last chance to hold the balance. What would you play here as White?
IM Sagar Shah explains the game in great detail in this video along with the solutions to the above four questions

Two DVDs for you to improve your calculation:

If you would like to work on your calculation and become better at it, we recommend the two part series by IM Robert Ris. The first one is Calculation Training, the second one is Extreme Calculation Training.

Know more as to what Calculation training is all about from the author himself