India shines at the Western Asia Junior Championship 2018

by Nongsha Angom - 03/12/2018

The Western Asia Junior Chess Championship was held from 16th November till 22nd November 2018 in the International Hotel Tashkent, Uzbekistan. There were 7 age categories for open and girls and more than 300 players from 11 western Asian countries took part in this grand event which had all the three format of the game. Our Indian players excelled in different categories and brought home 5 gold, 4 silver and 5 bronze medals from classical, rapid and blitz championship. In this report we bring you a pictorial report of the event with all the medal winners from India. It also includes annotated games by IM Nubairshah Shaikh who won a gold in the under-20 blitz.

This year the Western Asia Junior Chess Championship was held in Uzbekistan from 16th November till 22nd November 2018. 11 West Asian countries took part in the event namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, UAE, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan. The venue for the event was the beautiful International Hotel Tashkent, located in a business area of Tashkent which is close to a bazaar and a market. The spectacular hotel represents historic architecture in Tashkent.

The beautiful grand venue - Hotel International! | Photo: Bstatic

The map of the Hotel area in the heart of the pool? | Photo: Bstatic

As many as 14 medals were won by the Indian players in all the three format of the championship. U-8 player Jaivardhan Raj and U-18 player WFM Dhyana Patel contributed 6 medals to the tally by winning in every format.

The youngest participant in the U-8 category Jaivardhan bags 2 Silver and 1 Bronze medal! | Photo: Harsh Kanoje

Jaivardhan Raj(2nd from the left) won the Silver medal in the classical and rapid format and Bronze medal in the blitz championship. | Photo: UZCHESS

Current U-13 National champion WFM Dhyana Patel was another player who excelled in all the three format! | Photo: AICF

WFM Dhyana Patel( 2nd from right) won Gold medal in the rapid and blitz format and Bronze medal in the classical U-!8 championship. | Photo: UZCHESS

The only Gold medal in the classical format was won by former Sub-junior national champion Harshita Guddanti who score 7.0/9 points in the U-20 girls. She started as the eight seed and went on to add a whopping 148 Elo rating!

The amazing Harshita Guddanti with Tiranga! | Photo: UZCHESS

A rock solid performance by Harshita! | Photo: ChessResults

Arushi Kotwal (2nd from left) won Silver medal and Vrandesh Parekh (2nd from right) won Bronze medal in the U-14 girls and open section respectively. | Photo: UZCHESS

Vrandesh Parekh also won the Gold medal in the U-14 rapid championship! | Photo: Chessbase.in

Former U-8 Commonwealth champion Swayham P Das won the Bronze medal in both the U-10 classical and blitz championship! | Photo: Maahimilk

Garv Gaur bagged the Silver medal in the U-12 rapid championship! | Photo: Rishi Kaushik

Nubair's corner:

IM Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh clinched Gold medal in the U-20 blitz championship! | Photo: Nubairshah Shaikh

IM Nubairshah(front left) finished in 4th place in the U-20 classical championship and 5th place in the U-20 rapid championship. | Photo: SPORTUZ

After the tournament ended, Nubairshah Shaikh came back home and had to prepare for his upcoming examinations. But he spent precious time from his schedule and sent us some really high quality materials of his games from the tournament. Nubair has analyzed his games and there are some excellent positions and comments from which you can learn.

Below is a beautiful annotated game by IM Nubairshah against Abdisalimov Abdimalik:

Who do you think is better in this position? Once you have made up your mind, check Nubair's analysis below! It's White to play.

Raghav Srivastav - Nubairshah Shaikh

What should Black do in this position? Mind you, it's an unusual tactic!

Here's a typical blitz game with many hidden traps and interesting tactical ideas:

We thank Nubair for his excellent contribution to this article and hope that he aces his examination!

Find all the list of standings of every category here

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