Deepak Katiyar wins Beacon Open in Jaipur
The GMAX Album 1st Chess Beacon FIDE Rated Chess Tournament was quite a spectacle in the royal Rajasthani city of Jaipur. It was organised purely with the aim of promoting the game and was successful in all respects. The tournament attracted 460 participants from all across the country. In fact, there was one player from Bangladesh too. The organisers also gave free entries to 12 kids from a local orphange. Deepak Katiyar won the tournament with a score of 7.5/9 and Prince Bajaj completed his IM title formalities by reaching 2400 on the Elo list. Here's an extensive report with pictures by tournament director Rishi Kaushik.
The GMAX Album 1st Chess Beacon FIDE Rated Chess Tournament organised at Jaipur from 12th to 16th August gave a fillip to chess in Rajasthan. The tournament was conducted at the World Trade Park, Jaipur, the best shopping mall in Jaipur. The venue was a huge air conditioned hall on the second floor which could accommodate around 600 players comfortably. The ambience was so good that the players enjoyed the tournament thoroughly.
Prince Bajaj of Delhi was the top seed in the tournament (who, before withdrawing from the tournament, completed his IM norm requirements of reaching a live rating of 2400), followed by Nassir Wajih of Railways. The tournament attracted about 460 players from many states like Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, UP, MP, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, AP, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka etc. The tournament was a nine round Swiss format with a time control of 90 minutes for each player with an increment of 30 seconds per move.
The important result of the second round was that the fifth seeded Feroz Ahmed of Bangladesh was held to a draw by Oshan Modi of Haryana, rated about 800 points behind him. Likewise, third seeded Yunus Khan of MP had to split the point with Gautam Kataria of Rajasthan in the next round. There was an upset galore in the fourth round, with four of the top five boards had the results in favour of the lower rated players. The numero uno player Nassir Wajih (after the withdrawal of Prince) lost to Shivam Verma of Bihar and Devendra Kumar went down to Deepak Batra of Punjab.
Six players – Deepak Katiyar of Railways, Souhardo Basak of WB, Ashish Kumar of UP, Anil Shivpuri of Delhi, Sher Singh of Rajasthan and Deepak Batra were leading with five points each. Ashish Kumar defeated Anil Shivpuri, which was the only decisive result among the leaders. He maintained a clean slate of 6 points in as many rounds. But, the lead changed hands to five other players after seven rounds. Punit Indora of Haryana shocked the hitherto leader Ashish, Deepak Katiyar overwhelmed Deepak Batra, Sher Singh got the better of Souhardo, SM Umer of MP subdued Rathore Mahendra Singh of Rajasthan and Esshan Wadhawan of Delhi overcame the resistance of Darji Giridharilal of Jaipur.
Deepak Katiyar and Umer S.M registered wins in the eighth round to share the lead with 7.5 points after eight rounds. Sher Singh, Ashish Kumar, Esshaan Wadhawan and FIDE arbiter Rajendra Teli were trailing half a point behind. In the final round, Deepak Katiyar drew with Umer and Esshan defeated Rajendra to pave way for a three-way way tie at the top. After applying tiebreaks, Deepak Katiyar was declared winner and Umer runner up. Deepak received a cash prize of Rs.31000/- out of the total prize fund of Rs. three lakhs.
Category Prize Winners
Final Standings
About the Author:
Rishi Kaushik is the Tournament Director of Chess Beacon FIDE Rating Tournament in Jaipur. He is a chess player from Rajasthan having AGM title and Geospatial Consultant by profession with Tata Consultancy Services, Gurgaon. He always wanted to contribute towards Rajasthan Chess and this tournament that he has organized under the banner of one year old "Chess Parents Association" in the first step in that direction.