Lucknow: Seasoned veteran player, KK Khare of Lucknow, won the Krishan Baldev Mahana Memorial Chess for Veterans (those born 1962 and before) with a perfect score here today. Defending champion Qamar Naim was second.
Vinayak Rao, Lucknow, returning to play after many years, dropped a point only to Khare, to be third on tie-break along with Balgovind Awasthi, Kanpur.
The highlight of the tournament was an exciting game between Vimal K Bhatia, Lucknow, playing White vs Qamar Naim. Bhatia was winning all the way in the Rook endgame for the title but blundered.
Ms Rocio Perez from Mexico City was chief guest. Winners received trophies and all players were felicitated with a shawl, pen, framed group photo.
This is the only chess tournament for those aged 60 and above in India hosted regularly by Chess Club Black & White (CCBW) with free entry and lunch. Hopefully, many such tournaments will now start happening. Chess is surely an amazing sport for senior citizens.
The children of the club also got a chance to play with the senior chess players of Lucknow, Kanpur, Bahraich, Bareilly, Jhansi, Allahabad, Orai and Varanasi.
Final results
Kapil Kumar Khare 5pts, Qamar Naim, Vinayak Rao, Bhatia Vimal K, Balgovind Awasthi 4 pts, Mohd. Sabir Siddiqui, Basant Singh 3.5 pts, Shakiluddin, Santosh Kumar Srivastava, Sharad Sharma, Kamlesh Kumar Kesharwani, RK Gupta, KM Shukla, Kranti Kumar Gupta 3 pts, UB Singh, Shaikh Zafar Ullah 2.5 pts, RS Kashyap, Rambabu Sachan, Mool Chand, RP Gupta, Zahid Ali, Harish Srivastava, Ajit Kumar Srivastava, Ambuj Agarwal, Anurag Srivastava, Aslam Ahmad, Jitendra Singh Saxena, Mahana S, Parashuram, Deep Saxena, Dhruv Narayan 2 pts.
